Inside the impossibly bleak true story that inspired new Netflix film Society of the Snow

The Andes plane crash saw survivors forced to resort to cannibalism

4 months ago

La sociedad de la nieve, translated to Society of the Snow, hit Netflix over the weekend after a limited cinematic release where it’s garnered much acclaim after its debut at Venice Film Festival – and it now stands forward in the nominations for Best International Film at the Academy Awards. It’s easy to see why. J.A. Bayona (director of The Orphanage and The Impossible previously) has returned with his greatest film – a harrowing retelling of the 1972 crashing of Flight 571, which saw survivors stranded in the Andes mountain range, who with no food or water had to resort to cannibalism to survive. Bayona pulls no punches in showing how bleak this situation got. Pablo Vierci – one of the survivors – wrote a book called Society of the Snow which Bayona has adapted for Netflix in 2023. Here’s the true story that inspired Society of the Snow in full.

The flight had 45 passengers

Flight 571 consisted of 45 passengers, excluding pilot and crew. As the film shows, most of the passengers were from a rugby team travelling from Montevideo in Uruguay to Chile for a match. Other passengers included family members and a lady who was flying to her daughter’s wedding.

Via Netflix

But why did the plane crash? It was a disaster of multiple factors. The weather was bad, the engine poor. The route was also messed up because the weather got so bad the pilot had to try and land in Argentina. Because the plane was borrowed from the Uruguay Air Force, it legally couldn’t stay in Argentina for 24 hours so despite weather objectively being too bad to fly in it had to take off. The pilot tried to sort a new route and planned to go over the Planchon Pass. He thought he’s made it into Chile and began his descent, but he’d made a mistake and instead descended straight into the Andes. As shown in the film, the impact of the crash ripped the plane in half. Twelve people died instantly.

Nando, one of the survivors who is portrayed in the film, told The Guardian he thinks none of them should ever have boarded it in hindsight. “A Fairchild FH-227D, very underpowered engines, full of people, completely loaded, flying over the highest mountains in South America, in bad weather,” he said. “I mean, no way.”

The post crash true story of Society of the Snow

As Bayona depicts in the film, the survivors used the plane’s fuselage as a shelter. They burnt through the snacks on board to survive on, which were the usual culprits of sweets, chocolate, crackers, nuts and alcohol. They also bottled snow so that when it melted they could us it as drinking water.

Once supplies ran out, they tried to consume the leather from the plane seats. Eventually, they turned to the most traumatic last resort – cannibalism. The film shows the big debate and discussion the group had about the ethics of what they were about to do. The ones who were against it changed their minds after one of the film’s most heartbreaking moments: When the survivors overheard on the plane radio that the rescue mission was being abandoned.

Via Netflix

On day 17, disaster struck again when an avalanche buried the fuselage. Eight people died on impact. Nando Parrado broke through the snow and let air into the fuselage, but the survivors stayed inside it because a blizzard raged outside. They realised they had to start searching for help, so on day 61 three go the rugby players got layered up with food supplies (yep, still cannibalism) and the rest of the survivors stayed behind.

Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa and Antonio Vizintín were the three from the team who set off to find help. They thought they could climb over the glacier and land in civilisation based on what the pilot had told them – but the pilot was wrong. They were still in the middle of nowhere. Vizintín bailed and went back to the plane. The other two men hiked for another 10 days where they eventually came across a man fishing by a river. They got a note to him after he threw a rock and some paper and pen.“I come from a plane that crashed in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days. I have 14 friends wounded on the crash site. We need help. We don’t have any food. Please come and get us.”

The man travelled for 10 hours and alerted the army, who came out and rescued the two men. They then came in two trips for the survivors in the fuselage. 14 people survived.

When Canessa finally realised he was safe, he said “I looked at the rugby socks filled with the flesh of my friends and I said, ‘This should be buried. This is no longer food. We are going to have real food now.’ So I buried their remains.”

Society of the Snow is streaming on Netflix now. For more like this true story that inspired Society of the Snow, and for all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.