‘Society of the Snow’ Director J.A. Bayona On His International Oscar Submission [VIDEO]

On October 12, 1972, a rugby team boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 from Montevideo, Uruguay, headed for Santiago, Chile, for a scheduled game. Forty-five passengers, including crew, players, family members and friends, were on board. The plane crashed into the Andes and 29 of the 45 people survived the impact.

For 72 days, the survivors endured extreme weather conditions, hunger, and thirst. Ultimately, they needed to resort to extreme measures to live. When they were finally rescued, 16 souls were alive.

This incredible and gut-wrenching story has been told a number of times onscreen, most prominently René Cardona’s Survive in 1976 based on Clay Blair’s book and Frank Marshall’s star-studded Alive in 1993 based on Pier Paul Read’s book and written by John Patrick Shanley.

Now, more than 50 years after the calamity and rescue, celebrated filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible) brings us Society of the Snow, a staggeringly visceral film experience based on Pablo Vierci’s painstaking account of what occurred. Bayona cast his film with Uruguayan actors and involved the actual survivors in the creation of this epic work.

No stranger to true-life disaster narratives, Bayona made the highly underrated gem The Impossible in 2012. That film detailed the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the aftermath on one family, garnering Naomi Watts an Oscar nomination and co-starring a young Tom Holland. Both films are ultimately stories of survival against all odds as well as humans coming face to face with their own mortality. In addition to the physical and emotional odyssey, Society of the Snow delves into the young men’s spiritual journeys. In addition, Bayona does not shy away from the intimacy these men shared together.

Every aspect of the filmmaking from the extraordinary camerawork to the stirring score to the incredible visual effects to the outstanding ensemble is to be commended.

Society of the Snow will be released in theaters on December 22, 2023, and then stream on Netflix.