The Motorcycle Diaries [2004]

Original Spanish Title: "Diarios de motocicleta"

Directed by Brazilian director Walter Salles and written by Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera.

Biographical film about the young man who would later become internationally known as Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.
Movie tells the story of a journey by motorcycle across South America in 1952 by young Ernesto Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado. The film depicts the gradual development of Guevara's political outlook, but his revolutionary exploits are not mentioned except in a caption at the end.
The film is based on the books "Diarios de motocicleta" by Che Guevara, and "Con el Che por America Latina" by Alberto Granado. Che Guevara is played by Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, and Granado by the Argentine actor Rodrigo de la Serna.

Plot
In 1952, a semester before Ernesto "Fuser" Guevara is due to complete his medical degree, he and his older friend Alberto, a biochemist, leave Buenos Aires in order to travel across the South American continent in search of fun and adventures. Their objective is to spend time working at a leper colony in the Peruvian Amazon, and then travel on to Venezuela. Their method of transport is Alberto's ancient and leaky but functional Norton 500 motorcycle christened La Poderosa ("The Mighty One").
Their route is ambitious. They head south, aim to cross the Andes, travel along the coast of Chile, across the Atacama Desert and into the Peruvian Amazon and reach Venezuela just in time for Alberto's 30th birthday, April 2nd. Due to La Poderosa's breakdown, they are forced to travel at a much slower pace, and make it to Caracas in July.
During their travel, Guevara and Granado encounter the poverty and suffering of the lower classes of society while the rich live ignorantly in their high life-styles away from the problems.
They meet a couple who have had their land taken away from them by the landowners, and the exploited workers of a mine. In Peru, they volunteer for three weeks at the San Pablo leper colony. There, Guevara sees both physically and metaphorically the division of society between the people and the rulers (the staff live on the north side of a river, separated from the lepers living on the south). He also observes little difference between the poor people of different countries, perceiving them to be part of an international oppressed class. Guevara also comes to see Catholic church dogma as stubborn and difficult.
These encounters with injustice change the way Guevara sees the world, and by implication motivate his later political activities.
Guevara makes his "final journey" one night when he chooses to swim across the river that separates the two societies of the leper colony and spends the night in a leper shack instead of in the cabins of the doctors. This journey implicitly symbolizes Guevara's rejection of the wealth and aristocracy into which he was born in Argentina and the path he would take later in his life fighting for what he believed was the dignity every human being deserves.
This choice was also earlier reflected at a scene when Guevara and Alberto were content with sleeping over at a peasant farm after losing their tent instead of going to the ranches higher up at the hills.
As they bid each other farewell, Alberto reveals that his birthday was not in fact April 2, but rather August 8, and that the stated goal was simply a motivator: Ernesto replies that he knew all along.

The film was first presented at the Sundance Film Festival on January 15, 2004. Later it was featured at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2004.
The film screened at many other film festivals, including: the Auckland International Film Festival, New Zealand; the Copenhagen International Film Festival, Denmark; the Espoo Film Festival, Finland; the Telluride Film Festival, United States; the Toronto Film Festival, Canada; the Vancouver International Film Festival, Canada; the Celebrating Literature in Cinema Filmfestival Frankfurt, Germany; the Morelia Film Festival, Mexico; and many others.
Movie won 26 Awards including Oscar & other 35 nominations also.