Yellowjackets may be fiction, but this tale of survival actually happened.
In Society of the Snow, The Impossible director J.A. Bayona delves into the plight of the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the snowy Andes on Oct. 13, 1972.
Only 29 of the 45 passengers, a Uruguayan rugby team, survived the crash, and the physical and psychological conditions they endured while sheltering in the plane’s wrecked fuselage are unimaginable. Stranded without communications, shelter, medicine, or food, the players resorted to eating the bodies of the dead to survive.
The story was famously told in the 1974 book Alive by British writer Piers Paul Read, which was then turned into the Mexican film Survive! in 1976.
Society of the Snow will close this year’s Venice Film Festival and will be streaming on Netflix at a later date to be confirmed.
