Of the many Netflix titles set to premiere at Venice, one that is flying under the radar is J.A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow. The director of The Impossible, A Monster Calls, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has scored the festival’s Closing Night slot, which is going to put a lot of eyes on a film about one of the most harrowing plane crashes in history.
Directed and co-written by Bayona, the film recounts the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight disaster, carrying a rugby team headed to Chile.
Here’s the synopsis: In 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which had been chartered to fly a rugby team to Chile, crashed in the heart of the Andes. Only 29 of its 45 passengers survived the accident. Trapped in one of the most hostile and inaccessible environments on the planet, they have to resort to extreme measures to stay alive.
The cast is led by Enzo Vogrincic, Agustín Pardella, Matías Recalt, Esteban Bigliardi, Diego Vegezzi, Fernando Contigiani García, and Esteban Kukuriczka, all Uruguayan and Argentine actors who are largely unknowns.
Carlos “Carlitos” Páez plays his own father, who was aboard the flight and saw the horrors of what the surviving passengers had to do to survive. If you’ve seen the movie Alive, you probably know what’s coming.
Netflix has not given a release date for Society of the Snow, but expect that to change soon.
