J. A. Bayona Sets Netflix Real-Life Disaster Drama ‘Society of the Snow’
The movie — about a 1972 plane crash in the Andes that forced survivors to extreme measures, including cannibalism — will mark Bayona's return to Spanish-language filmmaking for the first time in 14 years.
J. A. Bayona
Ben Gabbe/Getty ImagesJ. A. Bayona, the Spanish filmmaker behind The Orphanage, A Monster Calls and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, is heading back to the real-life disaster world he last explored with 2012’s The Impossible, this time with Netflix on board.
Society of the Snow (La Sociedad de la Nieve) will tell the story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which in 1972 was chartered to fly a rugby team to Chile and catastrophically crashed 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 were forced to resort to extreme measures — including cannibalism — to stay alive.
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The Spanish-language film — written by Bayona, Bernat Vilaplana, Jaime Marques and Nicolás Casariego — is based on the book La sociedad de la nieve by Pablo Vierci. The ensemble cast includes Enzo Vogrincic Roldán, Matías Recalt, Agustín Pardella, Tomas Wolf, Diego Ariel Vegezzi, Esteban Kukuriczka, Francisco Romero, Rafael Federman, Felipe González Otaño, Agustín Della Corte, Valentino Alonso, Simón Hempe, Fernando Contigiani García, Benjamín Segura and Jerónimo Bosia.
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“It was during the documentation process for The Impossible that I discovered Society of the Snow, Pablo Vierci’s fascinating chronicle about the tragedy of the Andes,” said Bayona. “More than 10 years later, my fascination for the novel remains intact and I am happy to face the challenge that lies ahead: To tell one of the most remembered events of the 20th century, with all the complexity that implies a story that gives so much relevance to the survivors as well as to those who never returned from the mountains. I also face it in Spanish, a language that I excitedly return to after 14 years without filming in my own language, and with a team of young Uruguayan and Argentine actors, whom I’m totally thrilled with.”
Filming for Society of the Snow will take place in the Sierra Nevada (Andalucía, Spain), in Montevideo (Uruguay) and in various locations in the Andes (both in Chile and Argentina), including El Valle de las Lágrimas, where the events actually took place. Producers include Belén Atienza (The Impossible, The Orphanage) and Sandra Hermida (The Impossible, A Monster Calls).
“After a few years working on the project, we are very terribly excited to start filming Society of the Snow,” said producers Atienza and Hermida. “We want to thank Netflix for their determined support of this project, which will be shot entirely in Spanish, and also thank the survivors and the families of those who perished in the tragedy of the Andes, for their enormous generosity in sharing their story with us.”