FACTBOX - Who was Che Guevara?

(Reuters) - At the 61st Cannes film festival, U.S. director Steven Soderbergh presented "Che," his two-part, four-hour-plus epic on Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, with Benicio del Toro in the title role.

Here are some facts on Guevara, who was executed in Bolivia just over 40 years ago.

* He was born Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, in Argentina in 1928, to a middle-class family of leftist leanings. Although suffering from asthma, he excelled as an athlete and a scholar. He completed his medical studies in 1953.

* In the same year Guevara went to Guatemala, where Jacobo Arbenz headed a progressive regime that was attempting to bring about a social revolution.

* The overthrow of the Arbenz regime a year later in a coup supported by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency persuaded Guevara that the United States would always oppose progressive leftist governments.

* This conviction became the cornerstone of his plans to bring about socialism by means of a worldwide revolution.

* He left Guatemala for Mexico, where he met Cuban brothers Fidel and Raul Castro, political exiles who were preparing an attempt to overthrow the Cuban dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

* Guevara joined Castro's force, which landed in the Cuban province of Oriente in late 1956 on the yacht "Granma". Most were routed, but 12 survivors -- including Castro, his brother Raul and "Che" Guevara -- regrouped in Sierra Maestra mountains where they launched their guerrilla war.

* Batista fled Cuba in January 1959 and days later Castro's troops entered Havana and established a Marxist government.