“I always say, ‘The most contagious thing in the world is the Cuban spirit,’” says actress Adria Arjona, “and I just wanted to keep being around it.” And Arjona, the Puerto Rican actress, would know after immersing herself in one of the most poignant pictures of the year, Los Frikis.
Set in 90s Cuba under the rule of Fidel Castro, the film follows Gustavo (Eros de la Puente) and his older, punk music loving brother Paco (Héctor Medina). Trapped in a world of oppression and poverty, the brothers must find a way to stay alive. And we aren’t talking about the struggle to live without your iPhone charger or WiFi. We mean actually surviving when food and water are scarce. Castro even banned rock music across the country for decades. The censorship forced music lovers underground, with the hard-core fans becoming known as los frikis.
Yes, that actually happened.
But if you think that is terrible you should know, it gets worse. Some Cubans were so desperate, they intentionally injected themselves with HIV to get access to government-run sanatoriums. There at least, they had access to food, water, and medicine. With hope that a cure was near, many Cubans chose to overlook the risks of a fatal disease to get immediate refuge.
“[My] ignorance that I didn’t know that this happened in our Latin American history, [it] sort of shook me,” says Arjona. “I read the script and I was like, ‘Wait, hold on.’ And I read it again and then I kind of went on this rabbit hole of just finding things online. [Then] I’m like, ‘This story happened, it’s real!’” Arjona plays Maria Perez, the caregiver of the sanatorium that Gustavo and Paco go to. “It wasn’t only about this group of punk rock kids injecting themselves with AIDS. It was so much more than that,” she says. “It’s about hope, it’s about joy, it’s about finding freedom inside of your own country.”
Arjona so believed in Los Frikis that she joined the project as an Executive Producer. Her belief in this story meant directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz (both of Peanut Butter Falcon) could count on her 110% of the time.
“We had her in the stands so we could get her out early because I didn’t think she’d want to be there all day,” says Nilson about shooting a scene where the actors are playing baseball. “She came to me and she’s like, ‘why am I not on the scene?’ And I was like, ‘oh, because you’re the movie star. We’re just gonna get you out early.’ And she’s like, ‘I don’t think so. I’m playing baseball!’” And that camaraderie helped make one of the best scenes in the film. It’s a little joy, amid so much suffering.
Alongside Arjona are Cuban actors de la Puente and Medina. “We were gonna have Cuban actors do the Cuban roles, or we were just not going to do the movie,” says Nilson. The commitment to that idea was almost as unbelievable as the story being told. “There’s so many nuances about getting a human, an actor, an artist out of Cuba,” says Nilson. “Passports are not permanent in Cuba. They’re trip specific. They’re not awarded to everybody that applies.” That meant that in order to make the film legally an enormous amount of red tape and a number of steps were necessary to get the project underway. “The Cuban government had to approve the script if we were going to shoot it in Cuba. We sent a script. They did not consent to the movie being shot in Cuba, but they did consent to supporting the actors leaving.” That meant that the production for Los Frikis had to be shot in the Dominican Republic.
Los Frikis without question, and quite effortlessly I might add, rises to the top of my most-loved films of 2024. Do yourself a big solid and give your time and support to Los Frikis when it opens in theaters. Not just for the phenomenal work that will be witnessed on-screen. But for those lives who suffered as a result of one of the biggest atrocities to the Cuban and Latino people.
Arjona is right, the Cuban spirit is contagious. May their artistic nature and need for independence and freedom infect us all.
Los Frikis is playing in Los Angeles and New York now and will be in select theaters nationwide on December 25.
