The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) is a lyrical, coming-of-age road movie based on the youthful journals of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Set in 1952, it follows 23-year-old medical student Ernesto and his older friend Alberto as they set off from Buenos Aires on a ramshackle motorcycle to cross South America. What begins as a freewheeling adventure — full of humor, misadventures, flirtations and brotherly banter — gradually becomes a profound moral and political awakening. If you watch the film you’ll experience: - Sweeping, sun-drenched landscapes and intimate, hand-held scenes that place you alongside the travelers as they cross vast deserts, Andean peaks and Amazonian lowlands. - A warm, playful chemistry between the two leads (their camaraderie and occasional clashes feel authentic), balanced by quiet, affecting moments that reveal Ernesto’s growing empathy for the marginalized. - Emotional highs and lows: light-hearted road-trip antics are punctuated by wrenching encounters — most notably an extended stay at a leper colony — that slowly shift Ernesto’s outlook from curious student to someone mindful of social injustice. - A contemplative, evocative tone: the film mixes humor and romance with melancholy and moral urgency, accompanied by a gentle, evocative score and thoughtful pacing that lets scenes breathe. Overall, The Motorcycle Diaries is both an intimate buddy film and a visually rich journey of conscience. It’s as much about friendship, youthful freedom and discovery as it is about how travel can open one’s eyes to the world’s inequalities — a quiet, moving portrait of how a young man’s travels set the course for the life he would later lead.

Actors: Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo De la Serna, Mía Maestro

Director: Walter Salles

Runtime: 126 min

Genres: Adventure, Biography, Drama

7.3 /10 75 /100 7.7 /10 7.5 /10