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Jean-Claude Brialy, right, and French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel. PHOTO: AP

The script might sound familiar: a South American nation in turmoil, a leader from humble origins who becomes a hero to the poor, and the story made into a movie. No, not Evita, this is Evo.

The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is about to become one of the few serving heads of state to have a feature film made about his life. Evo Pueblo, which could be translated as Evo of the People, is about to wrap up shooting and should be in cinemas by the end of the year.

The ingredients of a great tale are certainly there. A coca farmer from an impoverished backwater who grew up under a straw roof, Juan Evo Morales Ayma was also a bricklayer and trumpet player before becoming a trade union activist and entering politics. Since being elected president in 2005 he has caused a stir by challenging the Europeanized elite, nationalizing gas fields and espousing the left-wing radicalism of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro.

The British film production company Buena Onda, which was involved in the commercially and critically successful film City of God, has partly funded the film, according to the Spanish daily El Pais.

The Bolivian director, Tonchi Antezana, said it would not be a hagiography. "It doesn't try to elevate Evo to a superhero, nor denigrate him as person. It's simply a story."

Since last December Antezana has filmed on location in Bolivia with a tight budget, 53 actors, most of them novices, and more than 1,000 extras.

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is to play a boxer in a Bollywood film after a dance sequence he did in an earlier movie proved a hit with viewers, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Producer Feroz Nadiadwala, who featured Tyson in his recently released film Fool and Final, has signed the American for a "huge price" in his next movie, titled Licensed to Kill, the Mumbai Mirror said.

Three leading Bollywood stars are also to star in the action thriller.

Nadiadwala told the daily that Tyson's cameo in Fool and Final had received a great response.

"I had decided to make a film with him later, but after the promos featuring him received a great response, I decided to start the film sooner," he said.

Oscar-winners Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson will join forces in a film about later-in-life love, to be set in London, Variety reported Wednesday.

Directed by Joel Hopkins, Last Chance Harvey will start filming in September starring Hoffman, 69, and Thompson, 48.

Thompson has been nominated for five Oscars and took home two, including one for her screenplay of Sense and Sensibility in 1995.

Her character makes a big impression on Hoffman's when she attends her on-screen daughter's wedding.

Writers had Hoffman, with seven Oscar nominations and two Academy Awards at home, in mind for the role when the script was being written, Hopkins told Variety.

France's cultural and political elite turned out Monday for the funeral service of the much-loved French actor and filmmaker Jean-Claude Brialy, one of the stars of New Wave cinema in the 1950s and 1960s.

President Nicolas Sarkozy was among the mourners gathered at Saint Louis en l'Ile church in central Paris. The gathering also included actors Catherine Deneuve and Alain Delon, several current and former government ministers as well as the mayor of Paris.

Brialy, a household name in French film who died aged 74 last Wednesday after a long illness, was due to be buried later in the day in Montmartre cemetery.

With a career spanning four decades, he worked with some of the best directors of his generation, including the New Wave pioneers Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle and Jean-Luc Godard.

The son of a French colonel, Brialy was born in Algeria and discovered cinema during his military service when he worked in an army film unit.

After walk-on parts in a string of hit movies including Truffaut's 1959 classic The 400 Blows and Malle's Frantic in 1957, fame arrived in 1958 with lead roles in two Claude Chabrol films, Le Beau Serge and The Cousins.

The success kickstarted his marathon career as an actor, including as the lead in Jean-Luc Godard's 1961 classic A Woman is a Woman, and then director, with a dozen works to his name since the 1971 Eglantine.

A household name in French film whose close friends included the late actress Romy Schneider, Brialy had owned a popular Paris theater, Les Bouffes du Nord since 1986 and was a regular guest on radio and television.
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