A film starring the actor known as Mexico’s Brad Pitt will be screened for the first time in the UK this weekend.

Eduardo Verástegui plays the male lead in Bella, the feel-good story of a Latino chef and a pregnant, out-of-work waitress in New York who spend a day together.

In 2007, Bella won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and grossed more than $10 million in the US box-office, which made it one of the ten most successful films of the year.

Although the New York Times’s film reviewer panned Bella as “saccharine,” readers of the newspaper voted rated it their top film in 2007, as did voters on Yahoo. It will be screened tomorrow and on Tuesday in London as part of the Latin American film festival.

Verástegui co-produced Bella with Metanoia, the production company he runs with two associates. The word Metanoia is Greek for conversion – and Verástegui founded it after a radical reversion to the Catholic faith at the age of 28.

A founder member of the Mexican boy band Kairo, Verástegui later became the star of a string of telenovelas, the high-octane Latin American soap operas popular throughout that continent, Russia and the Middle East. After moving to Miami to pursue a solo singer career, he appeared in a J-Lo video and landed the romantic lead in Chasing Papi (2003) a comedy in which he played a Latino male with three girlfriends.

An English language coach provided by 20th Century Fox prompted Verástegui to question his values and re-find his faith. He then made a vow never to accept an acting role which compromised his values as a Catholic or as a Latino male, a group too often portrayed, he claims, as “bandidos, gangsters, or if you are good-looking as a Don Juan.”

Frustrated, he thought of abandoning Hollywood for a life on the missions in Brazil. But a confessor said to him “Hollywood is your jungle” , and eventually Verástegui and two associates founded Metanoia.

It is a film company with a difference. “We want to make films that heal the pain of the soul,” says Verástegui.

He explains: “Art in general has the potential to heal the wounds of the heart – including jealously, anger, broken hearts and pride.”

“Art has the power to change people’s lives for good or for bad – it’s up to you, depending on how you want to use it. It can promote truth or it can promote lies” says Verástegui.

“We are in a war of ideas and whoever owns the microphone is the one that is going to be educating our children.”