Spanish Film director Juan Antonio Garcia Bayonas, known as Jota (J), from Barcelona Spain, hit the ground running, with his first 2007 horror film THE ORPHANAGE. This opèra prima, which had a valuable input from Guillermo del Toro as Executive Producer, garnered 32 wins and 43 nominations and remains a firm favourite in the genre, haunting audiences today as much as it did when it first emerged.

He followed it with the powerful film, THE IMPOSSIBLE (2012), with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor about an unbelievable story of a family’s survival when a Thai coastal resort was hit by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, with its 100 ft high waves, that devastated coastal areas from India to Indonesia and is considered one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. In A Monster Calls (2016), Bayonas directed a dark fantasy film where a young boy meets an ancient tree monster who helps him cope with his mother’s terminal illness and problems at school.

Now, Bayonas has brought out another tale of survival against all odds SOCIETY OF THE SNOW (2023) proving, yet again, how he has the gift of communicating stories of people surviving at the very edge of existence, stranded in a vacuum between life and death.

 Bayonas’ films all have a transcendental feel about them, but none more so that THE SOCIETY OF THE SNOW.  This tale is about the extraordinary survival of 16 young men (out of 45 passengers) from the 1972 Andes Flight disaster.  The Old Christians [Rugby] Club from Montevideo, Uruguay, chartered a Uruguayan Airforce plane to take them to play in Santiago de Chile. As they flew in dense cloud (with faulty navigational equipment), the twin-engine Fairchild turboprop plane crashed into a glacier 3,575 metres above sea level, deep in the heart of the Andes Mountain range.  

The plane split in two, with the front section with the bulk of the passengers tobogganing precariously down a glacier. A large number of them survived the actual crash, a few with what turned out to be fatal injuries. Some of the lads, being student doctors, did what they could to help.

Desperate to find a way to communicate in the days before mobile phones, it took them 10 days to locate the rear section. They struggled to get the radio working, only to hear the terrifying news that the search for them had been called off  as they remained trapped in one of the most hostile and inaccessible places on earth.

After finding that eating the leather of the seats was not possible and having run out of possibilities, they finally agree to resort to the unthinkable, cannibalism, in order to survive. Some refused and died. The medical students cut tiny fragments from the bodies and dried them on the fuselage.  In tears and fighting to reconcile their actions with their deep Catholic beliefs , their struggle is heartbreaking, harrowing, and astonishingly spiritual to see how the comradery among these young persons, turned out to be absolutely vital in assuring that were survivors to tell the tale.

 Eventually, the three strongest decided to set out to find help without any equipment, or suitable clothing, only knowing that they should head west, where the country of Chile lay.  Realizing the food they carried would not suffice for three, one decided to turn back, giving the other two, Roberto Canessa and Nando Parrado, a better chance to reach their destination. 

This is a profound study of resilience and endurance against all odds. Even knowing that 16 did survive, we are on the edge of our seats, as it seems impossible anyone could ever get out alive from that hellish place.

 Matías Recalt as Roberto Canessa and Agustín Pardella  as Nando Parrado

The accident and the aftermath gave birth to many films and books about the event. At the time, the cannibalism shocked the world.  However, it was a book written 35 years later, by Pablo Vierci, a close friend of the survivors, also called Society of the Snow, that caught Bayonas’ eye, while he was researching unbelievable survivals for his film: THE IMPOSSIBLE.

This story resonated with Bayonas’ fascination with how people behave and respond to extreme situations.  He was familiar with the story, so he was deeply moved by the more reflective and spiritual elements that Vierci had managed to include in his book. It was no longer seen from the sensationalist physical struggle, but from the philosophical and spiritual point of view. The angst and the pain were finally expressed in a way that Bayonas   (and the survivors themselves) felt respected the living as well as the dead.

Bayonas: -     “I was so moved and impressed [because] it had become a different story. What is beautiful about Pablo’s book is that the survivors started to write this book 35 years after the accident, because they didn't recognize themselves in those characters of old. The story had been so focussed on the cannibalism and they didn't  think it felt true. This new book has the weight and the gravitas of those 35 years. So, it's a more spiritual book, more about what they experienced on a philosophical and spiritual level and that was my challenge when making this film… I was less interested in the facts, they were already out there in previous films, but the 'spiritual' essence , as one of the survivor’s said, talking about the moment they were hit by the avalanche  when they all experienced a near to death moment… to hear that story through the voices of the dead, adds a sense of wonder . Those that are absent are present .In a way no one in the group dies, they live on in all of them.”     *(In Conversation with Guillermo del Toro).

 This intuitive, emotional route that Bayonas too helps us to be there, to feel the characters and their struggles on a visceral level.  This is a story of how these men stood together to fight off the total isolation, pain and horror of their plight. 

Bayonas touches a great deal of the sound, or lack of, up in those mountains, there are no birds, no creatures at all, for nothing survives at those altitudes.

“The only thing that you can hear in those mountains is yourself, which is very symbolic, as it’s also a deep journey of self-discovery for the characters themselves. They discover their own shadows… there is nothing alive … Silence is 10 tracks in order to achieve that silence in the cinema. When you hear nothing, the moment you introduce something it is hugely important – that challenge [faced us] here, because there were so few elements: Sounds of iron and the wind… the composer Michael (Giacchino) tried to make the landscape feel alien and hostile to the characters.”

The accident took place in the aptly named Valley of Tears. Filming there for more than a short period was not possible, so most of the shoot took place in the Sierra Nevada in Spain. So, many of the landscape shots of the location were real and using the 255-screen ratio format emphasized the vastness of the isolation.

Enzo Vogrincic as Numa Turcatti

The central character is the intensely spiritual NUMA TURCATTI (powerfully played by Enzo Vogrincic) who exudes charisma not only on the screen [created by Enzo] but Numa himself, on his fellow survivors at the time. His friends have described him as a saintly presence. He was prepared to give everything for his friends, and was one of the first to express that he wanted to donate his body should he die, for the rest to survive. 

Enzo Vogrinci, in the Bafta Q&A, expressed how he'd been struggling to feel his character, even if knew the hard facts, yet he was aware something was missing: -

“To build a character is a story in this case it was a real person whom I never go to meet. I met him brothers and his family and they told me about him and I met his friends and everyone told me exceptional details about his life, but they were never enough to build his character. Then Coche Inciarte a survivor, said that Numa felt like he was almost like Jesus Christ coming down. Then Robert Canessa told me that he was like a monk from another plane."

Enzo: "These are not things you can ‘act’, but then I met the actual survivors, and when we introduced ourselves to each other there were the jokes and comments about whether you were similar or not, but when I told them that I was playing NUMA, they went silent and gave me a hug (overcome with emotion). It was in those small details, or later, when his sister held my hand as she took me on a tour of his house, not letting go, that I found some valuable details, where I could understand what he had left in other people. It was very moving and impressive, and that was how I found the tools to build the character and to begin to understand the person who could leave these things in others.”

Bayonas: -  “ The survivors had not read the script and were very nervous, they had the feeling they were back ... They could even smell it again. For many [who saw the film] it was the first time that they had understood how hard it was for the others”

Society of the Snow  is avaible on Netflix

CAST: Enzo Vogrincic, Matías Recalt, Agustín Pardella, Francisco Romero, Andy Pruss, Simón Hempe, Rafael Federman. Agustín Della Corte, Luciano Chatton, Valentiín Alonso and others.