The plot of a coming-of-age film with a dramatic punk rock twist may seem unbelievable, but it is based on actual occurrences.
In “Los Frikis,” which takes place in Cuba in the early 1990s, hundreds of young, disenfranchised Cubans inject themselves with HIV in the early years of the AIDS pandemic in an attempt to get away from political persecution by entering sanitariums, or government-run clinics.
The movie, which is based on actual events, refers to the punk rock movement that gathered in Cuba in the 1980s and 1990s by using the Spanish term weird as its title.
Adria Arjona, a Puerto Rican-Guatemala actor who plays the lead in the film, stated, “I grew up in Miami, I have Cuban family, and I have Cuban friends, but I didn’t know this story specifically, so it was very important for me to tell it.”
Alongside two of the film’s co-stars, Hctor Medina and Eros de la Puente, Arjona, who appeared in the romantic comedy crime film “Hit Man” earlier this year and is well-known for her appearances in the television shows “Andor” and “True Detective,” spoke with NBC News.
Written and directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, the team behind the 2019 comedy-drama “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” “Los Frikis” tells the story of a young guy with Down syndrome who breaks out of a care home.
Cuba’s sanitariums were praised and criticized during the AIDS crisis. Dr. Jonathan Mann, the first AIDS director at the World Health Organization, called the clinics a “pretty prison,” despite the fact that they were credited with stopping the spread of HIV on the communist island.
As of May 1993, Cuba reported 187 cases of AIDS and 927 cases of HIV seropositivity, according to a Lancet study. In contrast, there were over 8,000 AIDS cases in nearby Puerto Rico, which has about one-third the population of Cuba, and 43,000 AIDS patients in New York City, which has a population that is closer to Cuba.
Cuba’s health program, however, has “unintended consequences,” according to a 2012 article in The New York Times.
Some Cubans attempted to evade testing in order to remain out. However, according to The New York Times, some others—typically teenagers who were cut off from their families—intentionally infected themselves in order to get entry.
At first, the military kept patients in the medical center. However, the inner life that eventually gave rise to Los Frikis might potentially be less austere than the conditions these punk rockers encountered on the streets.
Inmates received food, medical attention, and their previous salaries; art classes and theater groups were established. According to The New York Times, gay men could coexist, something that was not true in the macho world outside.
The narrative of this second group of young people is told in Los Frikis. They lived in a Cuba that became more and more isolated with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc. The revolutionary government under Fidel Castro repressed dissidents and other outcasts.
Anything you do here will get you in jail. One of the punk rockers in the movie, Paco (Medina), asserts that it is impossible to live without breaking the law.
Like other young people, Paco thought that by injecting himself with HIV, he might attend a sanitarium and avoid government repression. At these medical facilities, punk bands began to emerge, and hundreds of people were motivated to self-inject by recorded cassettes.
However, it would be years before the modern therapies that have made living with HIV a bearable disease were available, and many would soon suffer a harsh awakening as they passed away from AIDS.
Medina who will play Ra l Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro and the former president of Cuba,in an upcoming movie with Al Pacinosaid that he prepared for his role in Los Frikis by speaking to a sanitarium doctor who now lives in the U.S.
The doctor had worked at a sanitarium called Los Cocos, which was roughly 30 minutes’ drive southwest of Havana. He told Medina that it was painful to remember, since he had become friends with his patients who later died of AIDS.
Medina said much of the punk music that Los Frikis made at the time was not preserved. But viewers could still connect with the very positive message of their culture in the film, which shows how they found freedom in friendship, love and the communities they created at the sanitariums.
This message, Arjona said, transforms the Frikis from scary outcasts to relatable people who are vulnerable and want to heal from different traumas.
In the movie, Arjona s character, Mar a, tells Gustavo (played by de la Puente) that you can t expect to hold onto anything.
Faced with the deaths of her peers, Mar a poetically says that loved ones, sunsets and even cherished animals like horses eventually disappear.
This makes de la Puente think about one of the most enduring messages from the Frikis movement.
You don t need many things to have everything, he said. I am referring in the context of the film, and how that group of people becomes a family and creates such a beautiful experience in a moment from the history of Cuba that was very empty.
Los Frikis releases in New York and Los Angeles on Friday andselect movie theaters nationwide Dec. 25.
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