Meet the leaders

Directed by Oliver Stone. Club, Queen's Film Theatre, Belfast, 102min

SOUTH AMERICA. The final frontier. These are the voyages of one Oliver Stone, Esq. His mission: to explore strange new political systems and seek out alien left- wing firebrands, to boldly go where no American film-maker has gone before.

Following on from his studies of Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro, Stone's lively new political documentary sees the irrepressible director hit the road in fine style. South of the Bordersees the progenitor of such modern classics as Wall Street and Platoon kicking a football with Bolivian premier Evo Morales and playfully chasing after Hugo Chávez on a bike.

You can imagine how these shenanigans have gone down in the US, where Stone's trek has drawn fire even from broadminded quarters. The Village Voicerecently dismissed the film as being "so one-sided that it nearly validates what the Right says about Hollywood's liberal crusaders".

To criticise Stone's softball approach is hardly fair. South of the Bordersets out its stall as a corrective to mainstream American media, not a comprehensive analysis. An opening montage of clips from US news channels sees Chávez, the charismatic Venezuelan president, variously compared to Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and, oh yes, Adolf Hitler. Fox and Friends, the only TV current affairs programme to regularly feature cartoon sound effects, is shown making hysterical claims that Chávez chews coca leaves for breakfast; "He gets them from the Bolivian dictator," shrieks the blonde news anchor as she turns, quizzically, to her co-presenter: "There's a Bolivian dictator, right?"

Stone’s primary point is that these hated “dictators” have, rather contrarily, been democratically elected. As we meet and greet such popular regional leaders as Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and Lula da Silva of Brazil, the film coalesces into a useful political primer.

Regardless of Stone’s fondness for a good conspiracy yarn, there are no factual errors to be found in his historical account of dodgy IMF experiments, fair-skinned oligarchs and media manipulation. He locates the new vogue for socialism within a grand chronology that stretches back to Bolivar, Katari and Toussaint l’Ouverture and a recent past that includes one George W Bush.

For the director and his subjects, it’s a new dawn as well as a killer punch-line. Have you heard the one about the metal worker, the woman, the soldier and the bishop? They all became popular leaders in South and Latin America.