original title:
In viaggio con Che Guevara
directed by:
cast:
Alberto Granado, Walter Salles, Gianni Minà, Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo De La Serna
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
producer:
production:
Surf Film, G.M.E. Production
world sales:
country:
Italy
year:
2003
film run:
110'
format:
Digi Beta Pal - colour
sound:
Dolby stereo
status:
Ready (15/12/2003)
festivals & awards:
In 1952, 23-year-old Ernesto Che Guevara, who was a medical student at the
time, and his friend, the 29-year-old biologist Alberto Granado, embarked
upon a journey across the entire South American continent. During the
course of six months, these two men traversed Argentina, Chile, Peru,
Columbia and Venezuela. Setting out initially on a rather dilapidated Norton
500, but later travelling as hitchhikers, the men experienced at first hand the
plight of the rural population of South America. Che Guevara recorded his
impressions of the trip in a diary. In 2002, Brazilian director Walter Salles
made a feature film about the odyssey undertaken by the later revolutionary
figure and his friend; the film was entitled THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES.
Gianni Minà helped the filmmakers make contact with Guevara’s family and
with Alberto Granado.
For the now 81-year-old Granado, the making of Salles’ film became a moving
journey into his own past – which Gianni Minà decided to turn into a
film of his own. The resulting work is a road movie about a man looking
back on his youth, recalling a journey of fifty years previously that was to
make such a lasting impression on him.Minà’s documentary returns to the
major destinations of the 1952 trip, such as Santiago, Valparaiso, the Atacama
desert,Cuzco, Iquitos and the mines of Chuquicamata - where two miners
actually remember Che and his friend.