Our regional PM, Juanma Moreno, nipped up to the Sierra Nevada on Saturday to visit the filming of La Sociedad de La Nieve.

He said that he was proud that the director, J.A. Bayona, had chosen Sierra Nevada as a location for the film and pointed out that Andalucía has many large, natural spaces (around 1,000 kilometres) between Huelva and Almería.

The film is about the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which took off from Montevideo in Uruguay, bound for Santiago, Chile, but crashed high in the Andes mountains on 13 October 1972.

It was carrying a Uruguayan ruby team, The Old Christians. The accident became known as the ‎Miracle in the Andes.

Naturally, the film with have other filming locations, such as in Montevideo, in the Alps and the Valle de Las Lágrimas where the aircraft came down.

“We are proud that a film director of international renown, Juan Antonio Bayona, has chosen Andalucía and Sierra Nevada as a location for this film,” said PM Moreno. He went on to explain how the film would generate 150 direct jobs and that 80 local businesses would benefit from a film production of these characteristics.

The film, which is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the accident, is produced by Belén Atienza and Sandra Hermida for Netflix and based on a book of the same title by Pablo Vierci. There was also a film made on the subject entitled Alive! in 1993, starring Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton.

Juan Antonio Bayona directed the film The Impossible (2012) starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor about the Tsunami of 2004.

Editorial comment: be sure to watch it on Netflix when it is released.

(News: Sierra Nevada, Granada, Andalucia)