A Poet (Simón Mesa Soto, 2025) (4 Aug 2026)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A Poet (Simón Mesa Soto, Columbia 2025, 123 min.)

Middle-aged and erratic, Oscar is a failed writer who has given up on life. Unemployed and living with family, he wanders the streets of Medellín in a drunken stupor, lamenting the state of literature in his home country, where he has succumbed to the cliché of the tortured artist. However, the opportunity to mentor a young student offers a chance at redemption, if he doesn't screw it up first. In a performance marked by darkly comic pathos, first-time actor Ubeimar Rios stars in Simón Mesa Soto's Un Certain Regard Jury Prize-winner A Poet, a raw and riotous farce about how good deeds are often met with the universe's idea of cruel and unusually poetic punishment.

Reviews

"Immensely appealing.”

Indiewire

“Very funny."

The New York Times

"A hilarious fable... Both funny and poignant.”

Variety

"Deftly touches on themes of contemporary importance."

Screen Daily

“This mordant reflection on the place of art in a person’s life, and on the place of the artist in an exploitative society, finds the filmmaker at his most mature and thought-provoking, but also at his funniest. ”

MUBI Notebook

Trailer

Hercules in the Haunted World (Mario Bava, 1961) (11 Aug 2026)

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hercules in the Haunted World (Mario Bava, Italy 1961, 84 min.)

Immediately following the success of his vampire classic Black Sunday, Mario Bava was recruited to direct (and photograph) the second of Reg Park’s Hercules films for producer Achille Piazzi. Freely departing from Roman mythology, the film gave Bava the opportunity to reimagine the sword-and-sandal genre. On its surface a jovial comedy adventure, Hercules in the Haunted World features a striking use of color, which would become one of Bava’s directorial hallmarks. But this playful peplum is tinged with a sense of genuine foreboding, voiced by a masked oracle Medea (Gaia Germani) in one of the film’s most stunning sequences. When Hercules descends into the depths of hell and confronts Lico (Christopher Lee), who has the power to call forth corpses from their tombs, the film plunges into the eye-popping, bone-chilling horror for which Bava had recently become famous.

Reviews:

“Very expertly done, and handsomely mounted.”

--Manchester Evening News

“A breathtaking example of the ability of cinema to construct worlds before our eyes that invite our minds to enter and wander.”

--Screen Slate

“Quite an enjoyable ancient-world spectacular.”

--Ealing Gazette

“Hades, photographed with ingenious light and sound effects, steals the picture.”

--Bristol Evening Post

“One of the most insanely beautiful movies ever made.”

--Medium

Trailer

The Queen's Film Society upcoming events

A Poet (Simón Mesa Soto, 2025) (4 Aug 2026)

Hercules in the Haunted World (Mario Bava, 1961) (11 Aug 2026)