Our site truly appreciates Participant Media’s Modus operandi: financing and producing feature and docu films about change. After backing Pablo Larraín’s No – the Directors’ Fortnight selected winner featuring Gael Garcia Bernal, they’ve now partnered once again with the actor’s Canana Films for Diego Luna’s Chavez which is currently being lensed in Mexico with a cast that includes Michael Pena in the lead role, America Ferrera, Rosario Dawson, Wes Bentley, Michael Cudlitz, Gabriel Mann and a small part for Bernal.
Gist: Written by Keir Pearson (only screen cred is Hotel Rwanda) this is a biopic about Cesar E. Chavez which focuses mainly on the time period where he organized the largest non-violent protest (one that lasted almost five years and had the support of many Americans including Bobby Kennedy) in U.S. history to aid more than 50,000 farm workers in California. See docu below on just that.
Worth Noting: Hats off to this pioneer: Chavez was an ardent support of worker’s rights, but his nonviolence stance, not unlike Gandhi, also made him adopt a vegan lifestyle because he also believed in animal rights too.
Do We Care?: Though Participant Media picked up the U.S. rights, they’ll be looking to offload the biopic to a company such as Sony Pictures Classics or Focus Features.
