Lazaro and The Shark: Cuba Under the Surface is a story of community and hope in the face of repression. Director William Sourbin O’Reilly (A Crooked Line) dives deep into impoverished Cuba and captures a rare glimpse into the lives of its artists and activists.
The documentary (which recieved its local premiere at last year’s Sound Unseen festival) focuses on the intersection of art, poverty, and protest in Santiago de Cuba. The city hosts one of the poorest carnival celebrations in the world, but Lázaro, leader of the Conga de Los Hoyos, is determined to take the grand prize, awarded to the winning neighborhood. His fiercest competition is a man known as “the Shark”, a rival conga band leader who is well established and more establishment-favored. Materials are scarce and all competitors scrounge for creative resources, but in the margins of the upcoming conga competition, the subjects’ lives are strained with the tolls of poverty. Families are separated and great sacrifices are often required for survival.
Beneath the repression of Cuba’s government, conga is a valuable platform for unity and protest, but violence and conflict result for those who speak out. As alluded to in its title, it is Cuba, not conga, at the film’s center. Its most remarkable quality is its subjects, complex and admirable, who create a somber commentary on a country that we as Americans tend to romanticize. Each offers themselves as an example of Cuba’s failure to its own people, bringing further attention to Cuba’s economic decline as some look beyond their borders for a better life.
The film does an excellent job of immersing us in their world. By positioning two men with opposing outlooks against one another, it captures a great metaphor for the tension between Cuba’s government and its citizens. Ultimately, two very different modes of survival are at play, in which one man struggles for change and the other has simply bought in. Lazaro is clearly the underdog in a harsh and biased world, and representative, in this instance, of the freedom fighter,
but as it is often so in the course of activism, his success as such proves to be as tragic as it is inspiring.
This article appears in January 6 • 2023.