Guevara family hails Redford film

Redford screened the film for Guevara's widow and children

The family of the late revolutionary Che Guevara have praised a film about his life by actor Robert Redford.

Redford showed them The Motorcycle Diaries at a private screening in the Cuban capital Havana with Guevara's widow and children present.

"The film is excellent," said Aleida Guevara, who provided her husband's diaries to the film-makers.

Guevara took a nine-month motorcycle trip through South America in 1952 when he was a medical student.

"I came to present the film that I produced on Che Guevara and I am very happy to be in Cuba," Redford said before the screening.

Ramiro Valdes, a Cuban military commander who had fought with Guevara in the civil war before the Communists took power in the 1950s, also attended the screening.

Guevara's daughter Celia, who also saw the film, said: "If you read the book Daddy wrote on his trip through Latin America, you will see that the film is very faithful to the original."

Guevara's epic trip introduced him to the poverty in South America, and was a catalyst to him joining Fidel Castro's Communist guerrillas in Mexico. The group won power in Cuba in 1959.

Guevara was later killed by Bolivian government troops in 1967 while trying to incite a Communist revolution there.