“Che Guevara: The Last Companions”, interview with director Christophe Dimitri Reveille

Presented at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “Che Guevara: The Last Companions” is the debut feature by Christophe Dimitri Reveille, a documentary that took over twenty years to complete. The film reconstructs the untold aftermath of Che Guevara’s execution in Bolivia in 1967, when his last surviving companions, three Cuban guerrilla fighters, undertook a gruelling 2,400-kilometre escape across Bolivia, hunted by thousands of soldiers. Through rare archival footage, animation and exclusive interviews with the protagonists themselves, as well as members of the Bolivian army and a CIA operative, Christophe Dimitri Reveille pieces together a story that has remained largely invisible for sixty years. At its core, the film asks what revolution means for those who live in its shadow, the people who followed, protected and ultimately lost the man they believed in.

A seed from Benicio del Toro

Christophe Dimitri Reveille‘s journey into this story began with a book and a single encounter. In 2004, he met Benigno, one of Che’s closest companions, and spent over two years co-writing his biography. A graphic novel followed, then the idea of a documentary, initially just about Benigno. It was a conversation with Benicio del Toro, who had played Che in Steven Soderbergh‘s film and knew Benigno personally, that shifted the scale of the project. “He was like, ‘You met Benigno, but you’re doing a documentary about Benigno? You should do a documentary about all of them.’ But it’s impossible to meet all of them because even meeting one is hard. But then he put a seed in my brain”. From that point on, Christophe Dimitri Reveille began tracking down every surviving companion, one by one.

Twenty years of research, one question at a time

To ask the right questions, Christophe Dimitri Reveille immersed himself in every available account of the Bolivian campaign: biographies, military histories, previous interviews. At each stage of the guerrillas’ journey from the death of Guevara to their return to Cuba, he found specialists who had spent a decade or more on a single episode. “I met someone who did huge work about the Bolivian army for 15 years. At each step of the journey, I was able to find five or six people like me who worked 10 years on that specific moment”. Their knowledge helped Christophe Dimitri Reveille to build a fuller picture with every conversation.

Losing the Comandante, losing a father

In the film, Christophe Dimitri Reveille draws a distinction between what the Bolivians lost and what the Cubans lost when Che was killed. The Bolivian fighters lost a commander. The Cubans lost something far more intimate, a man who had given them purpose when they had nothing, who had been at their side for a decade, and whom they had been sent to protect. “When he died, they fell. They fell politically. They had to go back to Cuba and say to Castro, ‘Sorry, we were supposed to protect him and we failed'”. That first night in the forest after the execution, Christophe Dimitri Reveille says, the Cubans were not just escaping an army, they were walking away from the centre of their lives.

Many truths, no single truth

One of the film’s most striking qualities is its refusal to settle on a single version of events. Each companion carries his own Che, his own reading of the revolution, his own account of what went wrong. Christophe Dimitri Reveille embraces this multiplicity without pretending to resolve it. When asked during a funding meeting whether he had found the truth, he answered honestly: “I’m not pretentious. I don’t know the truth, but I can say the truth is somewhere here”. At the end of twenty years, Christophe Dimitri Reveille says, “I have many more questions than answers”.

For the people in the shadow

Asked whether “The Last Companions” is an homage to the unseen figures behind every revolution, Christophe Dimitri Reveille confirms. The film, he says, is for everyone who works in the shadow.

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