{"id":461555,"date":"2026-05-22T10:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/461555\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T10:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T10:05:11","slug":"che-guevaras-last-comrades-speak-in-cannes-film-festival-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/461555\/","title":{"rendered":"Che Guevara’s Last Comrades Speak In Cannes Film Festival Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChe Guevara: The Last Companions<\/a> (Les Survivants du Che<\/a>) begins with stark images of Guevara\u2019s body laid out on a table. Officials in Bolivia wanted it widely known they had captured and killed \u2013 executed, in fact \u2013 the famed rebel commander who had helped lead the Cuban Revolution.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis body was thin, almost frail \u2013 evidence of the extreme duress Che endured as he tried to foment revolution in Bolivia, advancing through jungle and mountainous terrain. He wasn\u2019t alone \u2013 around him were loyal guerrillas who lived and fought as he did. Che Guevara: The Last Companions, directed by Christophe Dimitri R\u00e9veille, examines what took place in Bolivia with Che and his fighters, and how those who escaped initial capture tried to make it out of Bolivia alive.<\/p>\n

\n\tRemarkably, decades after the events in Bolivia, the filmmaker was able to make contact with Che\u2019s surviving fighters in Cuba and France. He describes his film as a \u201cwork of memory. As if I had become the custodian of these \u2018testamentary\u2019 testimonies, and they should not be buried in the silence of oblivion\u2026 It is by crossing the journeys of each person involved that I was able to revisit, as faithfully as possible, this decisive moment in the second half of the twentieth century.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Benigno<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBenigno in \u2018Che Guevara: The Last Companions\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPentacle Productions<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first Che comrade R\u00e9veille met was Benigno, whom he tracked down in Paris in the 2000s. They collaborated on the guerrilla\u2019s memoir, Benigno: Che\u2019s Last Companion, and later a graphic novel, Benigno: Memoirs of One of Che\u2019s Guerrillas. R\u00e9veille would go on to meet Urbano and Pombo, also key to Che\u2019s ill-fated campaign in Bolivia.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was impressed because when you meet one of them already, it\u2019s unbelievable, but when you meet all of them at the end, you\u2019re like, \u2018Okay, this is amazing,\u2019\u201d R\u00e9veille tells Deadline. \u201cBecause they are all personal stories. Each character can be a movie by himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe adds, \u201cIt took time to go back there to find the right contact, to find the right person, to get in touch with them. That\u2019s why [the documentary] took 22 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBolivian officials display the body of Ernesto \u201cChe\u201d Guevara on October 10, 1967 in Vallegrande, Bolivia.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMARC HUTTEN\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s easy, in retrospect, to consider Guevara\u2019s escapade in Bolivia an act of folly. After the 1959 overthrow of the Batista regime in Cuba, he tried to bring revolution to Congo before heading to South America. But it\u2019s important to remember that the Cuban Revolution itself was a far-fetched idea, given that Batista was allied with United States, the superpower only a few miles\u2019 distance across the Straits of Florida.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt works the first time,\u201d R\u00e9veille notes of the Cuban Revolution. \u201cThey thought it will happen in Congo and then in Bolivia. But they thought about history and I think they forget about geography.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Animation<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAnimation in \u2018Che Guevara: The Last Companions\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPentacle Productions<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the absence of archive footage of Che, Benigno, Pombo, and Urbano and comrades in the jungles of Bolivia in the 1960s, the director turned to animation to illustrate the story.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to put the audience in their shoes. So, I was like, \u2018I have to use something.\u2019 I impose the idea [of animation]\u201d R\u00e9veille explains, confessing that he had doubts it would work. \u201cSuddenly, I was scared after a test and my producer luckily says, \u2018Christophe, trust yourself. It works. Really, we are not involved like you. We are third eyes on your movie. It\u2019s going to get expensive for us. We\u2019re going to find the money, trust yourself. We find the money, go ahead, keep going with that idea.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"R\u00e9gis<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tR\u00e9gis Debray (left) and director Christophe Dimitri R\u00e9veille at the photocall for \u2018Che Guevara: The Last Companions (Les Survivants Du Che)\u2019 at the 79th Cannes<\/a> Film Festival on May 20, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVictor LOCHON\/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tChe Guevara: The Last Companions is not a one-sided telling of the story or an attempt to further mythologize Che. R\u00e9veille also tracked down key figures who opposed Guevara\u2019s revolutionary activities in Bolivia, including Gary Prado, a Bolivian military officer who led the company of Rangers that captured Che in 1967, and F\u00e9lix Rodriguez, who had fled the Cuban Revolution as a teenager and was later recruited to work for the CIA. Rodriguez was present at the building in La Higuera where Che was held and where Guevara was executed on the orders of the Bolivian government. R\u00e9veille also interviewed R\u00e9gis Debray, an author and leftist intellectual who supported Che.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt the end, I tried to let everyone say his truth,\u201d R\u00e9veille says. \u201cWe don\u2019t judge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an interview included in press notes for the documentary, the director expands on his vision of providing a balanced view of history.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I first went to Bolivia, I was the first one to think, \u2018Gary Prado is a bastard!\u2019 But actually, he isn\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cAs [Prado] says in the film, \u2018Our job as soldiers was to defend our country.\u2019 I\u2019m not saying he was right, but you can understand where he was coming from. I had already met Benigno, which helped me quickly track down the military men, the CIA agent [Rodriguez], the guy from the Bolivian Communist Party (El Negro). They all said, \u2018This kid [R\u00e9veille] is asking interesting questions, we should meet him.\u2019 And that\u2019s how I managed to collect all these testimonies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChe Guevara: The Last Companions is an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival<\/a>, premiering in the Special Screenings section. It comes at a time when the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and associates faces possibly the greatest threat to its continued survival. Earlier this year, the Trump administration removed one of the last pillars of support for Cuba by ousting Venezuela\u2019s leftist leader, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. Without access to Venezuela\u2019s oil, the island nation cannot power its electric grid.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s more, earlier this week the Trump Justice Department indicted Ra\u00fal Castro, Fidel\u2019s 94-year-old brother and a former president of Cuba himself, on murder charges, in connection with Cuba\u2019s downing of civilian aircraft in 1996 that were carrying Cuban exiles.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Christophe Dimitri R\u00e9veille<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPentacle Productions<\/p>\n

\n\tR\u00e9veille says given the circumstances in Cuba, he feels ambivalent about unveiling his documentary at the world\u2019s most glamorous film festival.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Cuban people, they are suffering and me, I\u2019m in Cannes enjoying with my movie. It\u2019s a kind of schizophrenic situation because I feel guilty,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany of the people he interviewed, including Benigno, have since passed on. \u201cI did this movie for them to tell their story,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m sad that like 90 percent of them, they will never see the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Che Guevara: The Last Companions (Les Survivants du Che) begins with stark images of Guevara\u2019s body laid out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[47241,10532,199870,199871,93,61,60,199872,270],"class_list":["post-461555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-che-guevara-the-last-companions","tag-christophe-ru00e9veille","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-les-survivants-du-che","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}