Héctor Medina, star of the film “Los Frikis,” thinks the Cuban spirit is punk rock.
Released on Christmas 2024 and now available on streaming services, “Los Frikis” tells the story of two brothers who secretly rock out to Nirvana as they try to survive the island’s “Special Period” in the 1990s. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba’s economy went with it, having relied on the U.S.S.R.’s support. The ensuing shortages and rationing made everyday life extremely difficult on the island.
“Los Frikis” drops us into the middle of this scarcity.
The movie’s all sex, rock ’n’ roll and rebellion, even as it deals with heavy stuff. It takes inspiration from the true story of the estimated hundreds of Cubans who purposefully injected themselves with HIV to gain access to government-funded sanatoriums, where there was food and even ice cream. The result is a devastating yet riveting work of historical drama.
Medina plays Paco, a mohawked lead singer with a feral streak. To craft his character, the Cuban actor recalls how Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, who co-directed and co-wrote the movie, kept telling him: “I want a wolf, I want a wolf, I want a wild wolf.” And that’s just what he delivered, along with moments of tenderness.
In an early scene, before anyone goes to the sanatorium, Paco kills a stray cat so he, his bandmates and his little brother can eat. As the younger sibling Gustavo, actor Eros de la Puente shows both hunger and heart as he agonizes over the death of a feline.
“There’s a sense of maturity that young Cuban people have that’s part of growing up in Cuba, because it’s almost like a jungle,” De la Puente said over a Zoom call, adding that he had to go back to a time in his life to revisit that younger innocence. “You need to learn how to survive and how to do things for yourself. And Gustavo doesn’t really have that characteristic.”
“Los Frikis” only gets wilder after the cat meal — if not by destroying Gustavo’s innocence, then certainly testing it in ways far beyond the typical coming-of-age tale. Paco doesn’t grow so much as he exists as a force of nature.
Adria Arjona, who most recently starred in Zoë Kravitz’s dark thriller “Blink Twice” (2024), as well as the romantic comedy “Hit Man” (2023), rounds out the cast as a love interest to one of the brothers.
Bringing Cuban history to life with sympathetic and compelling characters, “Los Frikis” dramatizes how hard it was to survive in Cuba in the ’90s — which is an important service, according to De la Puente. “People have no idea what’s going on in Cuba,” he said. “Cuban people, basically just wake up to find food for that day, and that’s a very sad way to live.”
Medina, who was born in 1989, agrees.“The truth is that right now it’s worse than [the] ’90s,” he says. In 2024, hurricanes, followed by earthquakes, hurt the island’s already aging infrastructure. Rations and shortages have increased. Blackouts are common.
This political reality makes the story especially timely. Now based in Miami, Medina fondly remembers the real punks of the ’90s, sharing the time when his uncle took him to a “special place” that played only rock ’n’ roll and where members of the counterculture gathered.
“They were good people, just different, people who were looking for freedom,” Medina says before recounting when, as a teenager, he got to meet the purported last, real Friki — Gerson Govea — who injected himself with HIV at the time and is still alive. “I remember the mohawk, the black clothes, piercings, a lot of tattoos. He passed me a cigar and he talked to me. And I remember he was so protected with all the young people in that place. It was like a family.”
That sense of camaraderie extended to the production of “Los Frikis,” where several crew members sported mohawks to match the leading man, in solidarity with the community he represents.
The production also fostered cross-cultural learning in other unexpected ways.
“I’m learning about my country through Mark and Tyler, who are two American guys — that’s so funny,” says De la Puente, now based in L.A., who didn’t know about this aspect of his nation’s history before reading the script. “I had no idea,” he adds. “In the moment I read it, I was doubtful and I was like, ‘This can’t be entirely true.’ So I rushed and I went to my grandma’s house and into my dad’s house, and I started asking them questions. And yeah, it was true.”
The film will certainly start more conversations about what drove punks on the island to such lengths in the ’90s — if people see it. The film got a limited theatrical release last Christmas Day, with screenings in Los Angeles and New York. It’s now available to stream on Prime Video, YouTube, Apple TV and more.
When Medina is asked about his hopes for audiences seeing his movie, he makes clear how he wants to inspire them to take action in their own lives.
“I want people to think about freedom. Think about what people [are] capable to do for freedom,” he said. “We need to think about the rock ’n’ roll spirit. … We need to not be under control.”
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