Los Frikis (2024)

[BluBonnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPpZaE_HlKY

Phil Lord and Chris Miller dive into Cuba's 'desperate and defiant' punk history in Los Frikis trailer

When it comes to adapting important historical events for film and television, Latin American history and culture often gets short shrift.

Spider-Verse duo Chris Miller and Phil Lord want to change that with Los Frikis, a film executive produced by the duo that tells a powerful coming-of-age story centering around two brothers, Gustavo (Eros de la Puente) and Paco (Héctor Medina), and their punk bandmates in 1991.

Los Frikis is based on and inspired by true events of a group of Cuban punk rockers from the late ’80s and ’90s, who embraced punk rock and English-speaking music, both of which were banned and dubbed "the enemy's music" by the government. They were viewed as the weird ones, the "freaks," and rather than run from it, they called themselves "los frikis."

As oppression and extreme poverty took over Cuba in 1991, the brothers and other Frikis took "a desperate and defiant stand," by intentionally injecting themselves with HIV to be sent to a government-run sanatorium where, far from Castro's hands, they carve out their own utopia.

Lord, who is Cuban-American, said in a statement that he feels it's important to tell Latino stories that would "likely be lost if they aren't able to find ways to be told through wider audiences."

"It’s been important to myself and Chris to help tell these Latino stories under our Lord Miller banner," Lord said. "The generosity and collaborative spirit of our whole cast, along with insight from additional Cuban writers, directors, artists, and friends across the Cuban diaspora helped create a beautiful film that truly comes from the heart of Cuba, but is meant for the entire world."

The film costars Adria Arjona (Hit Man, Andor), who also serves as executive producer on the film. Los Frikis is "the most important movie" she's made, Arjona said in a statement. She "was so taken aback that I had never heard about this story; it uncovered a part of Latin American history I didn’t know existed," she said, adding that "many of the actors had never left Cuba before this project, and seeing life through their eyes is the biggest gift filmmaking has ever given me."

[BluBonnet]

Rated R for language, sexual content, some graphic nudity and drug use

[BluBonnet]

This is opening on Christmas Day (limited release)

‘The Peanut Butter Falcon’ Directors Discuss the Cost of Turning Down the Major Studios to Make ‘Los Frikis’: “We Chose a Tough Path”

It’s fitting that Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz’s Los Frikis is about the punk-rock spirit. It’s truly the most punk-rock choice they could’ve made following The Peanut Butter Falcon, their critically acclaimed 2019 indie that starred Dakota Johnson, Shia LaBeouf and Zack Gottsagen.

After Peanut Butter Falcon’s profitable theatrical run and awards season contention, Nilson and Schwartz were tempted with all the usual offers from the major studios, but their hearts kept gravitating toward a uniquely challenging story about the Cuban experience in the 1990s. Needless to say, their admirable decision to remain in the independent space was met with a lot of blank stares and head-scratching.

“We took a meeting with a studio head who was like, ‘Alright, I’ve got a movie with two movie stars. You’ll get on a plane tonight, and we’ll go shoot it.’ And we were like, ‘Holy shit, that’s amazing, but we’re working on this Spanish-language Cuban movie about HIV and punk rockers,’” Schwartz recalls to The Hollywood Reporter. “And, at the time, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he respects how steadfast we are in our creative vision.’ But, looking back, I think he was looking at us like we were idiots, and he might not be wrong. We chose a tough path.”

Nilson and Schwartz’s unconventional move to delay the safety of a studio project for a Spanish-language Cuban story about punk rockers who self-infected themselves with HIV was so controversial that it cost them their representatives at the time. Their now-former reps were right by their side when Peanut Butter Falcon struggled at first to gain festival traction and distribution, until its eventual world premiere at 2019’s South by Southwest landed an audience award and a theatrical release through Roadside Attractions. Thus, the duo were encouraged to take the path of least resistance for their sophomore effort, but despite knowing the pitfalls ahead of them, Nilson and Schwartz couldn’t shake their storytelling instincts.

“It was not smart what we did. We understand that,” Schwartz and Nilson admit. “And [our former reps] were right: Los Frikis has been difficult. They saw that down the runway … and said, ‘We don’t want you to have to experience that again.’ And out of naivete or hubris or the undying quest for art, we decided to do Los Frikis anyway.”

[BluBonnet]

This is a beautiful and heart-breaking movie, eloquently told, that transports us to a time and place that has seldom been seen in the movies, and a story that very few people know about.

The Cuban accents are thick, but the whole movie is subtitled so that shouldn't really matter, whether or not you understand Spanish.

Adria Arjona is absolutely perfect in the supporting role she chose for herself (she was executive producer).

Even though the movie was actually filmed in the Dominican Republic, the production design does a beautiful job of making everything look like Cuba in the 1990s.