In 1972, a plane carrying a group of Uruguayan teenage rugby players crashed in the Andes en route to Chile. Lost and isolated in the most inhospitable conditions, the survivors had to turn to cannibalism. Seventy days later, they were rescued after two of them, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, trekked through the mountains for 10 days to find help.

“Was it a miracle? Was it a tragedy? What did it mean?” asks Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona (The Impossible, Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom), whose latest film Society of the Snow is an uber-intense depiction of the events that unfolded. It is based on Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name, a first-hand account by the 16 survivors. 

Featuring a solid cast of Argentine and Uruguayan newcomers, Bayona’s powerful telling focuses on the characters and delivers an awe-inspiring, extreme experience for an extreme, heartbreaking story.

Produced by Netflix, the film opens on Friday, December 15 in theaters across Argentina. It will be available for streaming on January 4. 

Unlike the first book about the Andes tragedy (Alive), Pablo Vierci’s book is a compendium of first person accounts. How did you work on the adaptation?

The book has 16 chapters, one for each survivor, expressing their emotions and the questions that remain unanswered after so many years. It was a challenge because when you write a script, you basically have to focus on action and dialogue. But it did give me the inner life of the characters. So, the challenge was how to extract that and put it into the film. Every time we wrote a script, it ended up being reduced to the facts, and I already knew the facts. So, it was very hard for us to find a way into the story. 

We arrived at it when we realized that the story had to be told through the eyes of Numa [Turcatti, played by Uruguayan actor Enzo Vogrincic], whom all the survivors described as the most selfless. Then it took a very interesting turn, because the survivors started to talk not only about themselves, but also about the others for the first time.

How did you bring together all those stories, in terms of directing so many actors and having so many characters? 

The challenge was not so much narrating individuality, but to find the essence of the story: what is the common denominator of all these people? I turned to the most remembered event of this odyssey, the moment they have to use the bodies. It was very interesting how the notion of anthropophagy was a little overshadowed in Vierci’s book, because he focused more on the person who gives the body to his friend and not so much on the friend who consumes the body. 

The act itself takes on a gigantic dimension, right? On a philosophical level too, if you wish. It highlights what I believe is the essence of this story, when I was finally able to decipher it: to understand that you and the other are the same. That if you have the strongest legs you will walk for us, and if you need my body I will give it to you so you can return home.

It’s also a story of solidarity, a notion politicians are neglecting today. Can this story deliver a healing message to the audience?

I believe that through fiction and feeling empathy for others, you can understand even the most unthinkable things. In this story, we can come to understand them, like the relatives of the deceased who, watching the film 50 years later, understood what the survivors’ roles were on the plane. This proves the power of fiction to lead us to understand others through empathy. I think that, and understanding that you and the other are the same, is also very important in the world we live in.

The filming was very long. Was that a decision or did the circumstances impose it?

We have always tried to make the shoots as long as possible, because having time to shoot is a luxury. To give the actors some room, time to explore, to react, to correct. Whenever we have produced our own films, we have always tried to do it that way. The longest shoots I have had are not the ones in Hollywood, but the ones I’ve done in Spain. Because we manage the times and the budget.

A long shoot on a mountain location with dozens of actors and a pandemic doesn’t sound easy. What was the hardest part of making this movie? 

The hardest thing was definitely being on a shoot where the mountains ruled. It was really the mountain that dominated the situation. One day I woke up to start filming and the entire mountain was orange, because it was covered by a layer of sand from the Sahara.

And you couldn’t film there, you had to improvise. And being in the mountains, suffering from altitude sickness, having to send people back to the hotel because they really didn’t feel good. They were very tough working conditions, not just for me but for the entire team. And you have to get used to it. The survivors had to go through an adaptation process to live this adventure, and we also had to go through our own adventure to film this story.

This film is a very intense theatrical experience. How do you feel about the fact that it will probably be watched mostly on home screens?

Well, I think it’s complementary. The platform will make the film accessible in corners of the world where it would be unthinkable for this film to be seen. On the other hand, the film was clearly made to be seen on the big screen. When Netflix came into the movie — and without them it wouldn’t have been made — there was a firm commitment to release the film in theaters. Obviously, as a big cinephile, I will always defend cinema in the movie theater, but it’s also true that Netflix will allow this film to reach the whole world and places we never thought it would reach.

We truly made this movie to be seen on the big screen, and we spent 10 years trying to bring it to theaters in a conventional way. It was the theaters that didn’t allow the film to exist. There are market laws that establish caps on projects in Spanish. This film, due to its ambitious nature and how we wanted to do it, shot on location, required an immense effort that surpassed that limit. We couldn’t find the money to do it in Spanish. In the end, it was Netflix that made it possible. That’s where I think they are compatible. Both Netflix and the cinemas should really reach a point where these films — auteur films, made almost as independent film productions — can reach cinemas and also be available on platforms.

You’ve worked in the Spanish film industry, where the state has the main role in promoting local production, and the market-driven Hollywood, which is very different. Government funding of films has become a prickly issue in Argentina. What’s your take on that?

The state and public funding are fundamental to cinema. Cinema cannot be reduced to its economic side, because we’re talking about an economic, industrial profit, but also cultural gain. I always say that if art were governed by economics, Van Gogh would be a sh*t artist: he sold just one painting in his lifetime. You can’t reduce it in that way. Especially when it comes to the state, which must help art to be made and distributed for our gain, beyond the financial.