Society of the Snow (La sociedad de la nieve in Spanish) is a 2023 survival thriller film directed by J.A. Bayona chronicling the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight disaster. The film is an adaptation of Pablo Vierci's book of the same name, which documents accounts of all 16 survivors of the crash, many of whom Vierci knew from childhood. The cast is composed of Uruguayan and Argentine actors, most of whom are newcomers.
Society of the Snow closed the 80th Venice International Film Festival, in an Out of Competition slot. It is scheduled to be released theatrically in Uruguay on December 13, 2023 and in Spain two days later, on December 15, before streaming on Netflix on January 4, 2024. It was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards.
Synopsis[]
In 1972, the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, chartered to fly a rugby team to Chile, catastrophically crashes on a glacier in the heart of the Andes. Only 29 of the 45 passengers survived the crash and finding themselves in one of the world's toughest environments, they are forced to resort to extreme measures to stay alive.
Cast[]
- Enzo Vogrincic Roldán as Numa Turcatti
- Matías Recalt as Roberto Canessa
- Agustín Pardella as Nando Parrado
- Tomas Wolf as Gustavo Zerbino
- Diego Vegezzi as Marcelo Pérez del Castillo
- Esteban Kukuriczka as Adolfo "Fito" Strauch
- Francisco Romero as Daniel Fernández Strauch
- Rafael Federman as Eduardo Strauch
- Felipe González Otaño as Carlitos Páez
- Agustín Della Corte as Antonio "Tintín" Vizintín
- Valentino Alonso as Alfredo "Pancho" Delgado
- Simón Hempe as José Luis "Coche" Inciarte
- Fernando Contigiani García as Arturo Nogueira
- Benjamín Segura as Rafael "el Vasco" Echavarren
- Rocco Posca as Ramón "Moncho" Sabella
- Luciano Chatton as Pedro Algorta
- Agustín Berruti as Bobby François
- Juan Caruso as Álvaro Mangino
- Andy Pruss as Roy Harley
- Santiago Vaca Narvaja as Daniel Maspons
- Esteban Bigliardi as Javier Methol
- Paula Baldini as Liliana Methol
- Federico Aznarez as Enrique Platero
- Alfonsina Carrocioas Susana Parrado
- Silvia Giselle Pereyra as Eugenia Parrado
- Virginia Kaufmann as Esther Nicola
- Felipe Ramusio as Diego Storm
- Blas Polidori as Gustavo Nicolich
- Emanuel Parga as Carlos Roque
- Iair Said as Julio César Ferradas
- Louta as Gastón Costemalle
- Carlos "Carlitos" Páez as his father, Carlos Páez Vilaró
Production[]
Bayona discovered Vierci's book while researching for The Impossible (2012), and bought the rights for the book at the end of shooting that film. The filmmakers recorded more than 100 hours of interviews with all of the living survivors. The actors had contact with the survivors and the families of the victims. Society of the Snow was announced in November 2021. Filming took place in Sierra Nevada, Spain; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Chile and Argentina in the Andes, including the actual crash site. The production had 138 shooting days. Its budget was reported to be more than €65 million.
In August 2021, a second unit, headed by Alejandro Fadel, Argentine director of Murder Me, Monster (2018), filmed landscapes in Chile for reference in on-set virtual production and post-production. Principal photography took place in Sierra Nevada from 10 January to 29 April 2022. In Sierra Nevada, the production was challenged by a scarcity of snow and the Saharan Air Layer, which covered the mountains in orange. Three replicas of fuselage wreckages were used: one was placed in a hangar built in a parking lot, another buried in artificial snow and supported by a hydraulic crane that allowed moving the fuselage, and the other above a tarn at 3,000 m (9,800 ft) high. In the hangar, a 30-metre-tall screen displayed the second unit's footage of the Andes. A third unit was tasked with more dangerous mountain shots. The three units consisted of around 300 workers. Filming in Uruguay concluded in late July 2022, and the production continued in Madrid.
David Martí and Montse Ribé, Academy Award–winning special effects makeup artists of Pan's Labyrinth (2006), created prosthetic corpses and wounds. Post-production was planned to last about five months involving 300 personnel. Vierci, who serves as an associate producer, visited the set in Sierra Nevada.
Bayona showed an early version of the film to one of the survivors, José Luis "Coche" Inciarte, before he died in July 2023. The 14 remaining survivors saw the film one or two months prior to the premiere.
Release[]
Society of the Snow was set as the 80th Venice International Film Festival's closing film, with a world premiere out-of-competition screening at the Palazzo del Cinema slated for September 9, 2023, following the festival's awards ceremony. It was selected to screen in the Perlak section at the 71st San Sebastián International Film Festival later in September. It also screened in the Out of Competition section at the 56th Sitges Film Festival, and at the 2023 AFI Fest.
The film was programmed for a technical screening run from October 20 to 26, 2023 in the Cine Aragonia of Zaragoza. A Spanish theatrical release for December 15, 2023 was also announced, before its worldwide release on Netflix on January 4, 2024.
Reception[]
Society of the Snow has so far received acclaim following its various festival appearances. On Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 22 critics' aggregated reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.2/10.
Guy Lodge of Variety deemed the film to be a "brawnily effective tear-jerker", "which grips with alternating waves of dread, horror and heart-swelling relief, even as it can hardly surprise".
Wendy Ide of ScreenDaily wrote that the film "is elevated by bracingly muscular action sequences".
Pete Hammond of Deadline wrote that Bayona made a "story of how humanity comes together for each other in the worst of circumstances, how faith can see us through, and the sheer will to live involved in just simply pulling off a miracle by never giving up".
David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Bayona reclaims "the real-life tragedy and story of human resilience" "with authenticity and chilling realism, with emotion but without sensationalism", underscoring the film to be "uneven but ultimately effective".
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