The directing duo behind the 2019 indie hit Peanut Butter Falcon have returned with their sophomore feature, Los Frikis. It’s a jaw-dropping historical drama that tells the true story of hundreds of Cuban punk rockers who intentionally injected themselves with HIV-positive blood in order to live a brief life of freedom in the sanatoriums of communist Cuba.
Los Frikis won the best narrative feature award at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, where it will screen on Saturday at 2 p.m. in the Dana Auditorium in Middlebury, Vermont. It’s also screening this week at the Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham, Alabama.
Written and directed by Michael Schwartz and Tyler Nilson, Los Frikis follows two brothers, Gustavo (Eros de la Puente) and Paco (Héctor Medina), living in Havana in 1991. Frequently on the edge of starvation and forced to do manual labor in fields, the brothers’ only joy in life comes at night, in the city’s underground punk rock clubs.
That’s where the real-life Cuban punk subculture, “los frikis”, was born in the 1980s. But it was a dangerous group to be part of, as listening to rock music was outlawed by dictator Fidel Castro, who called it the “music of the enemy.” To be caught in an underground punk club was to be savagely beaten by the police, arrested, or even killed.
In the 1990s, there emerged a subset of “los frikis” who had an idea. As the AIDS epidemic grew in Cuba, Castro began sending HIV-positive patients to be separated from the rest of the population in sanatoriums on remote parts of the island. There, AIDS patients lead a much more peaceful life than in cities like Havana: meals were guaranteed, beds were comfortable, music wasn’t policed, and there were no manual labor jobs to be done. They were free to exist as they pleased. In search of a better life, punk rock “frikis” began intentionally injecting themselves with HIV-positive blood in order to live in these peaceful communities.
Los Frikis follows Paco, who represents the approximately 200 “frikis” who took the risk, hoping that there would be a cure for AIDS by the time his condition worsened to the point that it became life-threatening. Meanwhile, his younger brother, Gustavo, makes a similar choice — but it involves keeping a dangerous secret from Paco and the kindhearted healthcare worker, Maria (Adriá Arjona), who works at the sanatorium.
Below, we spoke to Schwartz over email about following up his first film, The Peanut Butter Falcon starring Shia Labeouf, Dakota Johnson and Zack Gottsagen; visiting Cuba to learn about the real “frikis”, and infusing an uplifting message into a movie about such hardship.
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Los Frikis Co-Director Michael Schwartz on Researching The Cubans Who Loved ‘the Music of the Enemy’
MovieMaker: What was the first spark of the idea that led to Los Frikis?
Michael Schwartz: Coming off of our first movie, The Peanut Butter Falcon, Tyler and I wanted to be really thoughtful about what to do next. We’d made Falcon at the request of Zack Gottsagen, an actor with Down syndrome, who wasn’t happy with the opportunities he could find as an actor and we noticed how much audiences seemed to appreciate a story with universal themes centering around characters they hadn’t necessarily seen featured on screen before.
Similarly, Los Frikis emerged from friendships we’d built with actors and artists in the Cuban community and one of the most incredible true stories of Cuban resilience that they’d shared with us. From there the idea built slowly over a handful of years. We asked a lot of important questions before assembling a team that was capable of telling such a challenging story; including, Oscar winning producers Lord Miller (Phil Lord is Cuban American and it was important to us to have his involvement), Adria Arjona, and a team of some of the most talented actors from Cuba.
MovieMaker: How did you research this group of Cubans who intentionally injected themselves with HIV in the ’90s?
Michael Schwartz: When telling a story that is inspired by true events, we found it was important to do research not only on the specifics that become the backbone of the plot, but also on the time and place that those specific plot points took place. So, we visited Cuba, we read everything we could about the sanatorium system for HIV+ patients in Cuba, and talked to people that were there.
But for the specific actions taken by “Los Frikis” to make sense we had to go expand the area of study to include the history of the Cuban Revolution in 1958, the ripple effect created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the punk rock scene in Havana in the ’90s. And on a geek level, going even deeper, there was an investigation to what specific types of instruments could have made it to Cuba in 1991, how industrious locals made “tattoo guns” out of walkman motors and sewing needles, and punk kids could hear new songs from Nirvana when the government had banned rock and roll and labeled it “the music of the enemy.”
MovieMaker: Are Paco and Gustavo based on real people? Are any of the characters based on real people?
Michael Schwartz: In Los Frikis all the characters, including Paco and Gustavo, are inspired by the 200-500 Cubans that intentionally contracted HIV in the early 90’s but they’re not based on specific real people. Even when there is a ton of information available about specific real life people movies often have to take liberties to create “characters.” Conversations are dramatized, timelines are shifted, and details are changed or omitted. So we felt that it was best to create fictional characters paying tribute to real people from history.
MovieMaker: What was your biggest challenge when making Los Frikis?
Michael Schwartz: There are challenges in making any movie, and certainly Los Frikis had its fair share. The scariest was probably waiting for the actors to arrive to set in the Dominican Republic from Cuba. It was the middle of Covid and the passport process is fairly complicated in Cuba even without a global pandemic so there was a couple of weeks where it looked like we might have our locations built and crew on hand but no actors. That said, the actors did make it a day before started shooting, and when I look back it feels like there were more miracles involved with the making of Los Frikis than challenges.
MovieMaker: What did you want people to take away from watching this movie?
Michael Schwartz: The world has always been a complicated place, and probably always will be. But friendship, love, and community is what brings hope even on the darkest day. Despite it’s challenging subject, Los Frikis is a movie that uplifts audiences, it may bring some tears, but it also brings laughter and we hope that it leaves them feeling connected to people who may seem far away but in so many ways are the same as they are, humans.
Main Image: A still from Los Frikis courtesy of Lucky Treehouse