Rising Mexican star Gael Garcia Bernal is to play Che Guevara in Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries.
The white hot star of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Amores Perros will spend two months in Argentina this summer preparing for the production, which is being co-financed by the UK's FilmFour and Germany's Senator Films.
"Apart from anything else, I need to get used to riding a motorbike," he said. "It's a good chance to learn", he told the UK's Telegraph Magazine in an interview.
Despite being Spanish language, the project is attracting strong interest from international buyers and is expected to be one of the strongest sellers at Cannes. Motorcycle follows the future revolutionary when he was still a young medical student travelling around South America. Playwright Jose Rivera adapted the script from Guevara's journals.
Robert Redford's Southfork Pictures, which holds the film rights to Guevara's memoirs, is producing. Bernal is next shooting Summit Entertainment's dot the i, an urban love triangle story from UK production company Arcane Pictures.
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