The Venice Film Festival will see the first showing of La sociedad de La nieve on the 9th of September, which was partly shot in the Sierra Nevada.
The film recounts the experiences of the 29 survivors of Uruguayan Air Force, flight, Vuelo 571, which crashed high up in the snows of the Andes in the Valle de Las Lagrimas (The Valle of Tears). They managed to survive up there during 72 days but not without resorting to cannibalism.
The film is based on a book written by the Argentinean journalist Pablo Vierci, who was a good friend of the survivors from before the crash. Director, J.A. Bayona discovered Vierci’s book while researching for his 2012 film The Impossible. The film is produced by Apaches Entertainment & Telecinco Cinema, and distributed by Netflix.
Although much of the footage was actually shot in the spot where the aircraft crashed, all the scenes involving the crash site and plane wreckage were shot in Sierra Nevada in three different locations, starting in January 2022 with a film crew of 300.
They used a different wreckage, mock ups (each weighing seven tonnes) in each location; the first one being in a large building belonging to the ski-resort (Club Deportivo Montebajo) which they nicknamed ‘The Hangar.’ Scenes from inside the wreckage were shot there with the Hangar walls decked with huge screens to provide background images. Most of the technical staff, such as make up and wardrobe, transport, etc, worked there.
The second ‘wreckage’ was place 3,000 metres up at the Laguna de las Yeguas, where the most dangerous scenes were shot — we’re talking about at an altitude of 3 kilometres up and in the middle of January. The third was much lower near the Cortijo de La Argumosa, in the olive-dotted valley of Güéjar Sierra.
The film will be distributed by Netflix, there is still no fixed date for its debute in Spanish cinemas or on their streaming services.
Readers might remember that there was a 1993 film about this accident entitled ¡Viven! (Alive) starring Ethan Hawke, who played the roll of Nando Parrado.
(News: Sierra Nevada, Granada, Andalucia)