Society of the Snow Trivia | 30 facts about the movie

Society of the Snow is a 2023 survival thriller film directed by J. A. Bayona about the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight disaster.

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1. Society of the Snow is a 2023 survival thriller film.
2. It was directed by J. A. Bayona about the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight disaster.
3. It is an adaptation of Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name.
4. It documents accounts of all 16 survivors of the crash, many of whom Vierci knew from childhood.
5. The cast is composed of Uruguayan and Argentine actors, most of whom are newcomers.
6. One of the survivors (Carlitos Páez) plays the role of his own father (Carlos Páez Vilaró) in the movie.
7. The film closed the 80th Venice International Film Festival, in an Out of Competition slot.
8. It was released theatrically in Uruguay on 13 December 2023.
9. It was later released in Spain on 15 December 2023, and in the US on 22 December 2023.
10. It was then released on Netflix on 4 January 2024.
11. The true story told in this film was previously made into the movies Alive (1993) in 1993, starring Ethan Hawke, and Survivr (1976) in 1976.
12. It has been the subject of several documentaries, including Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains (2007) and I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash (2010).
13. Official submission of Spain for the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category of the 96th Academy Awards in 2024.
14. One of the survivors (Fernando ‘Nando’ Parrado) plays the role Airport Family Member in the movie.
15. You can visit the crash site through organised annual tour in February each year.
16. Alpine expeditions are the organisers with an expert guide, Ricardo Pena and they go back each year with one of the survivors, Eduardo Strauch.
17. Although not elaborated on in the film, the cigarettes that the boys find in the luggage was from Javier Methol, one of the 16 surviving passengers.
18. Methol had been a representative for his family’s tobacco company “Abal Hermanos”, which explains the seemingly endless supply of cigarettes they had on the mountain.
19. In contrast to the ending of the 1993 film “Alive”, wherein the remaining survivors in the fuselage discover they are being rescued by the sound of approaching helicopters, the ending of this film accurately portrays the survivors discovering that Nando and Roberto made it to civilization through their radio, leading to them preparing and grooming themselves for their rescue.
20. However, the film also depicts the remaining survivors being rescued all at once. In reality, there was initially not enough space in the helicopters for all of them to be rescued immediately, so a portion of the group was rescued whilst the remaining men stayed on the mountain for one more night. Reportedly, two of the three rescue workers who were assigned to stay over night with the remaining men refused to go anywhere near the filthy fuselage, so they pitched a tent outside, while the other rescue worker decided to sleep in the fuselage in order to provide comfort for the rest of the men.
21. The film was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards.
22. It was one of the 15 finalist films in the December shortlist.
23. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 87 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website’s consensus reads: “Society of the Snow brings masterful technical skill to bear on its tale of real-life tragedy, but none of that spectacle comes at the expense of its simple, powerful message.”
24. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 70 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating “generally favorable” reviews.
25. The film appeared on a number of critics’ top ten lists of the best Spanish films of 2023.
26. The film was programmed for a technical screening run from 20 to 26 October 2023 in the Cine Aragonia of Zaragoza.
27. It was selected to screen in the Perlak section at the 71st San Sebastián International Film Festival in September 2023.
28. It also screened in the Out of Competition section at the 56th Sitges Film Festival.
29. It was also screened the 2023 AFI Fest.
30. 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.