TV-MA |1h 32m | Documentary | 2024
Advocating for democracy in Cuba has been Rosa María Payá’s family business—and business has been a struggle. Her father, revered democracy advocate Oswaldo Payá, was killed in 2012 when the car he was riding in was reportedly rammed by another vehicle with Cuban government plates.
His daughter now carries his fallen standard, waging the fight in exile. Expatriate Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang identifies with Payá’s painful separation from her homeland, but she doesn’t always understand the activist’s approach to politics in the HBO original documentary “Night Is Not Eternal.”
Surveillance
At the start of the film, Payá isn’t technically banned from Cuba, but whenever she returns, the government openly follows her with a clear intent to intimidate. Wang verifies the fact. She identifies the same license plates ominously reappearing throughout the footage she shot when she accompanied Payá on her July 2021 visit to Cuba. Payá came back for a major planned protest that was ultimately canceled due to the communist government’s brutal crackdown.Instead of marches and speeches, Wang documents the arrests of Payá’s friends. These most notably include Sayli Navarro Álvarez and her father, Félix, who reluctantly accepted eight- and nine-year prison sentences rather than consent to exile. Understandably, Payá feels some measure of guilt for accepting asylum in America while her friends and colleagues are imprisoned in Cuba, but she quickly gains prominence as an adept organizer and effective spokesman on the international stage.
Wang draws parallels between her own experiences producing and appearing in films critical of the Chinese government’s repressive policies and Payá’s work campaigning for a more democratic form of government in Cuba. Wang’s work includes “Hooligan Sparrow,” capturing the harassment endured by human rights activist Ye Haiyan, and “One Child Nation,” documenting the lingering trauma resulting from the now revised One Child Policy.
Nonpartisanship Needed
Nevertheless, Payá eventually brings her filmmaker-chronicler back down to earth by explaining that it’s not her job to represent any American political party or politician. Instead, she must take a scrupulously nonpartisan approach to build coalitions on behalf of Cubans, whom she represents first and foremost. Wang seems to understand, at least to some extent, when she films Payá’s attempts to testify at a congressional hearing, which are fruitlessly interrupted by a partisan debate regarding the trade embargo, drowning out her discussion of Cuban human rights abuses.
Still, Wang’s own biases clearly weaken what could have been a far more powerful portrait of a dedicated dissident activist. Frankly, she wastes considerable time on handwringing.
It’s a shame because the charismatic Payá makes a consistently cogent and compelling case against the Cuban communist dictatorship. The archival footage of her late father is also inspiring and eerily poignant. Perhaps most importantly, “Night Is Not Eternal” (a title taken from one of Oswaldo Payá’s motivational quotes) records the condition of the Navarros before their incarceration and artist Danilo Maldonado Machado (known as “El Sexto,” in English, “The Sixth”), a fellow prisoner of conscience after his sudden release.
Wang also vividly conveys the state of fear that persists on the isolated island nation as well as the stagnant depression its economic system has produced. Frankly, her aversion to anticommunism seems particularly strange, given the evidence she herself collects. However, she treats her subject with sufficient fairness, giving Payá ample time to speak for herself—quite persuasively.
For too long, the media elites have largely overlooked (or excused away) the Castro regime’s totalitarianism. “Night Is Not Eternal” is far from perfect, but it still shines a much-needed light on the dire Cuban human rights situation.
Despite its flaws, Wang’s documentary, especially the first half, is recommended for its unvarnished look at life in Cuba as it really is.
