The Partnership: J.A. Bayona & Author Pablo Vierci Tell The Real Story Behind ‘Society Of The Snow’
08.12.2023 - 21:01
/ deadline.com
In 1972, a small passenger plane crashed into a mountain in the Andes, its tail and wings ripping off in the impact. When the fuselage came to rest on the snow, it contained 33 survivors, among them the young members of a Uruguayan rugby team. Over an unimaginable 72 days, they would contend with starvation, exposure, hypothermia and two avalanches, until only 16 remained alive. Ultimately, they were forced to make an agonizing choice: consume the bodies of the dead or die themselves. J.A. Bayona’s film Society of the Snow, based on Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name, takes a fresh look at the story, giving voice to both the dead and the living. Here, the Spanish filmmaker and the Uruguayan author discuss how they collaborated to tell a vital story of human will and sacrifice that would honor the real experience of the survivors and their dear departed friends.
DEADLINE: Pablo, how precious and important was this story to you when you came to write it?
PABLO VIERCI: Well, I went to school with the survivors and with the deceased people, and all memories of my childhood are with them. I was 22 in 1972, and something like this, a catastrophe like this, everything changed, because at 22 years old you think everybody at that age is immortal. A plane with all your friends disappeared, there was 72 days of mystery, where my friends and I, who were in Uruguay, who didn’t go in the plane, we thought that they were not alive. So, when they appeared on the 23rd of December 1972, and when we knew the list, the 16 alive, and 29 deceased, everything broke in our heads, and in my mind, and in my emotions. When they came back, [survivor] Nando Parrado, he was my classmate, he asked me to help him with his writing. I had a