Just ahead of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, famed (or infamed, depending on who you are) entertainment industry muckraker Nikki Finke has been given an exclusive trailer of Oliver Stone’s much awaited and already controversial documentary South of the Border to post on her blog Deadline Hollywood Daily. The film aims its lens on Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and several other Latin American leaders who are generally painted as being left-leaning tyrants by the U.S. media (at some times unfairly, but let’s be honest, a lot of these folks aren’t exactly cut from the most democratic of cloth).

Regardless of one’s political leanings, this little picture serves as a interesting caveat to Stone’s recent surge of work. First there was the much anticipated Pinkville. The script was awesome and his production plans sounded dynamic and exciting, but then fell apart just before production began. It will supposedly still see the light of day—at least I’m hoping it will.

Then Stone jumped right into production on his George Bush, Jr. biopic W and is now knee-deep in his Wall Street sequel. One of my film-geek highlights is that Albert Maysles, the prolific documentarian behind such cult classics as Grey Gardens and Gimme Shelter, served as one of the two cinematographers on the project.

South of the Border is certainly not Stone’s first brush with controversial politics (he has based his career on exploring just that) nor is it his first study of controversial political leaders. His 2003 documentary on Fidel Castro, Comandante, drew an excessive amount of ire from conservative political pundits in this country.

The trailer for South of the Border can be seen here.