A. Rimbaud

A. Rimbaud (2026) is an experimental biographical film directed by Patrick Wang, running 175 minutes, with Blake Draper as the sole on-screen performer. The film spans the life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud from his adolescent years in Charleville to his death at 37. It opens with a teenage Rimbaud lying amid chalk marks representing grass, recounting his hatred of school and reciting early poems such as "Sun and Flesh." A central section dramatizes Rimbaud's turbulent two-year romance with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, culminating in the traumatic episode in which Verlaine shoots him. This psychological wound leads directly into a staging of A Season in Hell, presented not as the recitation of a finished text but as an act of live creation, foregrounding Rimbaud's tortured interior life. The film's second half addresses his abandonment of poetry and his years working as a coffee merchant in Ethiopia and Yemen (historical Abyssinia). Throughout, other characters are not portrayed by additional actors but are instead represented by musical instruments—Verlaine by a viola, others by a tuba and a begena—reinforcing the film's anti-realist, theatrical approach. The narrative emphasizes internal psychological states and the poet's disconnection from worldly recognition over conventional biographical incident, mirroring Rimbaud's own formal restlessness. The film was shot within a black box theatre and is a Canada/United States co-production.

Sources: Wikipedia, Letterboxd, Reverse Shot