In the first seconds of Quba!, a small choir emanates years of history through a haunting chant that hides something. Something that can only be identified if you know dig into the crevices of a country trapped in time. They sing “Havana!” in repetition. We don’t know if they’re paying tribute, pleading for some kind of restitution, or simply trying to make themselves heard. It is how Kim Anno’s revealing documentary begins, one that will make you see what happens when you’re born “different” in a culture that doesn’t accept the different. Strangely, modern society will make you think otherwise with its constant labeling, and its drive to convince of a twisted political ideology whose extremist side is incoherent.
Quba! is not a bad movie. It is just biased in terms of presenting its subject, and failing to capture the entire picture. In the movie, a good number of members of the LGBTQ community in Cuba try their best to explain how it is to live in the poverty-stricken country that the Castro family has maintained in their grip for decades. Even one of them shows up to explain their agenda, and while it is very noble, it feels like we’re missing something here. The documentary is a moving piece that does a great job in explaining the counterculture that has found a way to grow amid the military control that no one likes to admit is very much present in Cuba. One thing is being proud to survive such a complicated system, but another thing is to romanticize the fact that absolute control rarely works.
I always do my best when seeing movies that I don’t fully agree with, and this is one of them. There’s an interesting story here nonetheless, one that’s perfectly addressed by Anno’s vision to make an uplifting and optimistic movie. Quba! works in that regard, and the director at least doesn’t idealize the situation beyond what’s objectively real. Anno gives a voice to those who have been marginalized, and who have found comfort on a small island that is inevitably their home. It’s an honorable mission that manages to cast a shadow over the horrible reality of Cuba and its open policy on human rights.
It’s inevitable, but Anno does turn the camera toward the other side. The one where in Cuba, it is always sunny and joyful. Human rights include the other rights that are not addressed in the movie. The ones that indicate that children have to eat three meals a day. The ones that “allow” you to purchase several pieces of bread to feed your family. It would have been wise to explain that in the land of Fidel, not everything is fighting for the rights that are eventually acquired. There is a fight that’s still to be fought, and it isn’t exactly against the blockade. It’s against a system that has proven to fail in just about every country that has tried to implement it.
Due to my past, the state of the country I was born in, and how some ideologies remain so powerful they have been weaponized for the sake of the wealth of the “revolutionaries,” I had a hard time with Quba! There are some images that I’d rather not see, and real-life figures that I believe are guilty for what the people from my country have endured for decades now. These figures are depicted as saviors, and perhaps they are good to some. But I believe that, for all the good they may promote, they’re also the wealthy that sing “eat the rich!” while becoming millionaires and forcing a country to live in the past. And, believe it or not, letting some of their people starve, if it bodes well for the revolution.
Film critic. Lover of all things horror. Member of the OFCS. RT Approved Critic.
