Sons of Cuba (2009) User Reviews

Dreams of gold

[jotix100 · 8/10 · 31 May 2011]

Boxing, as a sport, is the subject of this magnificent documentary by British filmmaker Andrew Lang, who wrote, served as cinematographer and directed the film. Cuban boxers have gathered enough gold medals in Olympic competition that they seem to be on a category of their own. Mr. Lang takes us along to watch a group of young boys in training for regional competition in their dilapidated boarding school and arena.

We are introduced to the boys as they are awakened at five in the morning to begin the grueling training. Most of the kids' sneakers have seen better days. The clothes they wear give the impression to have been donated because of the different logos in their shirts. One boy sports a Dodgers baseball jacket, an anachronism for an island that has not seen the Los Angeles team play in their short lives.

Yosvani, the trainer, is hard on the lads. Mr. Lang focuses the documentary on three boys of about nine years: Christian, Santos and Junior. A little of each kid is revealed. Christian's father is a former gold medalist that has fallen to hard times. His son wants to be as good as the old man. Going over the newspaper clippings on the father's scrapbook gives an idea of what he was able to accomplish.

Santos has a problem with eating things that are prohibited. The boys must pass a weight test that will eliminate them from further training and competition. Junior, the last of the trio is suffering from a skin disease on his scalp that leaves big white spots on his head. The three young boxers in the film want to excel so they can take care of their parents.

One's heart goes to young Santos when he is eliminated. Yosvani, the coach feels so bad he has to be the one to announce the elimination. He is seen crying after a defeat that is hard to bear. His love for the children in his care is real, not faked. There are tears of happiness when Christian is the winner of his bout from his father who must see in the boy a reflection of himself.

The documentary touches also on Cuba, the crumbling country that saw better days. A trip to the old section of Havana shows decay all over. The US cars running in the streets are a reminder of another era. There is even a footage of the 2006 announcement on television when Fidel Castro had to step down because of a grave illness that leaves the boys stunned. After all, they have not know anything else in their short lives.

Andrew Lang gave us an intense look at a group of children striving to do better through sacrifice and hard work.

Sons of Cuba: a knockout doc

[intern-88 · 6/10 · 22 June 2012]

How do you deal with the pressures of competing in sport at a high level? What sacrifices would you make and how would you cope with defeat, knowing that your best wasn't good enough? And what if you had to confront all that when you're not even 12 years old?

These are the questions the young boys at the Havana City Boxing Academy grapple with in Andrew Lang's debut documentary Sons of Cuba. The academy is one of a number dotted around Cuba where the pick of the nation's boys live, train and study, all hoping to emulate the dozens of previous amateur world and Olympic medallists – including three-time Olympic champions Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon – who have represented the Caribbean island. With a population of just 11million, the country's success in boxing is extraordinary, built on a Stalinist prioritisation of sport as a way of providing a positive image to the world at large.

There are peculiar factors involved in Cuba's ascendancy in the world of boxing. Firstly, there is the drilling of children from an early age to become elite sports stars, typical of Soviet-style societies. For Cuba, the sport of choice has been boxing. Secondly, there is the advantage that the country's best fighters remain in the amateur ranks, so they can compete in the Olympics and the world championships again and again, while in most other countries amateur success is merely a stepping stone to the professional ranks. For example, Britain's Olympic Wunderkind from 2004, Amir Khan, lost out on gold to the veteran Cuban Mario Kindelan, but has since gone on to claim a version of the world light- welterweight title as a professional (though he defeated Kindelan in a rematch in what would prove to be Khan's last amateur fight).

Cuba is still scarred by buildings that are falling apart and beyond repair, while the much-admired Fifties cars that sparsely populate the country's roads are unreliable, kept in use out of sheer necessity. Even today, Cubans struggle to get from A to B, queuing at street corners to hitch a ride on anything that has wheels and that is going vaguely in their direction.

The making of Sons of Cuba coincides with other traumas for Cubans. The ill-health of their long-time leader Fidel Castro, who announces he is stepping aside in favour of his brother, Raul. With the constant sense of threat from the US and the privations of the Special Period, the loss of their leader only adds to Cubans' sense of uncertainty. For the boys in the boxing club, this uncertainty is compounded by the defection of some of the country's leading fighters to the US, something seen as the worst kind of betrayal.

Yet for all the peculiarities of the Cuban situation, Sons of Cuba deals with many very universal themes, too. For example, the relationship between Cristian and his father is an intriguing one. Luis Felipe is clearly a fairly arrogant man who has fallen on hard times and lives on past glories. He is pretty hard on his son, who he believes will never be as good as him. Yet when he finally realises that his son might be good enough to be a champion, too, he is reduced to tears of joy. If you do catch Sons of Cuba, bring the Kleenex; behind the machismo, this is a deeply touching story.

If there is a problem with Sons of Cuba, it is the nagging feeling we've been here before. The low-budget documentary, following the lives of people through a familiar narrative, which ends with some kind of triumph over adversity. A good and equally entertaining example from last year was Sounds Like Teen Spirit, the story of children trying to win the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. Of course, a director needs to find some kind of way of pulling the material together to make sense of it all, but there is the danger that the resulting story is a little trite.

But if the triumph-over-adversity story arc is a little too familiar, the joy of Sons of Cuba is in the detail, and in the very human range of emotions that the boys – and their mentors – go through along the way.