In the new documentary Havana Libre, filmmaker Corey McLean follows a community of Cuban surfers who refuse to abandon their sport despite police harassment, government bureaucracy, and being shut off from the international surfer community.
"If you want to feel something and understand Cuba, you just need to get to know these characters going about their lives, trying to pursue something that they love and seeing how difficult it is," says McLean. "Cuba has had this really difficult relationship with the water. The Cuban government essentially made the water off limits to all of its people unless expressly given permission for it. To try and develop a sport in that space is already really difficult. The fact that it's primarily a Western sport is also not particularly appealing to the government there. And so, together, those reasons basically forced surfing to be this underground sort of invisible sport."
