Andean survivors talk about the Netflix film

Andean survivors talk about the Netflix film


More than 50 years later, the incident is filmed […]

There are certain stories that we never get tired of hearing, they last for years and, from time to time, take on a new guise. And in the case of survivor Roy Harley, in the last few months alone, it has happened three times.

More than 50 years later, and after a multitude of films, documentaries and books, the tragic plane crash in the Andes in 1972 finds a new version in the film “The Snow Society”, which will be released in cinemas on December 14.

Also in preview Netflixon January 4, 2024, the film is directed by JA Bayona (“The Impossible” and “The Orphanage”) and is based on the book of the same name written by Pablo Vierci.




“Initially I wanted this story to remain among the survivors, I wanted to keep it as someone keeps something very dear in a safe. But it’s impossible, the story doesn’t belong to us,” survivor Roy Harley says exclusively. to the Travel by fare.

Since the film began to be ready, Harley has seen it three times: a first cut without music and with the director present, another with only the survivors and their close relatives, and a third with the relatives of the dead and the government authorities.



Survivor Roy Harley, center, with a baby on his lap

“It’s very beautiful, very faithful to the history we live in [nos Andes]. Bayona was able to interpret our stories and transform them into this wonderful story,” describes Harley, who also praises the cinematography and the soundtrack, and believes it will be “a great film globally”.

One of the highlights, in fact, is the impressive reconstruction of the photographic documents of the time which, in the film, come to life with the actors of the cast, as seen in the two comparative photos below.



Original photo (left) and Netflix film (right)

Survivors of the Andes

The journey of the twin-engine turboprop Fairchild, between Montevideo and Santiago, should have lasted about three hours, but the surviving passengers would not return home until more than two months later.

After taking off from the Uruguayan capital with 40 passengers and five crew members, the Uruguayan Air Force jet lost speed and crashed into those Andean mountains, breaking in two.

At the foot of the San Hilario mountains, between the Tinguiririca and Sosneado volcanoes, at almost four thousand meters above sea level, the F571 crashed at 3.30pm in the Valle de las Lágrimas, in the middle of the immensity.

They went 72 days without bathing or changing clothes, waiting for help that never seemed to arrive. Of the 45 passengers only 16 survived.

The snow society

For the surviving comrade Gustavo Zerbino, in a statement to the report, the organization of that micro society was a way of accepting fate in that “mountain mode” that they had to face, during the long wait for help.

“You have to take into account that, at almost four thousand meters above sea level, when the whole world has abandoned you, you have to accept that the fate of dying or living depends on you”, says Zerbino.

For him, survival depended on building “a supportive society in which rules and norms appeared by necessity. We lived in total chaos, surrounded by death.”

“The film manages to show exactly what we experienced in the mountains. Let people feel and connect with what we experienced there [em 1972]. It is very positive for the time we live in this world of wars, pride and arrogance”, describes Zerbino in an audio sent to Travel by fare.

However, this survivor is keen to remember that the protagonists are those who died in the accident, “who helped us survive”.

“The film closes a stage, but will connect the entire world through the most important survival story of the 20th century,” concludes Zerbino.

photo: Netflix/Disclosure

Not knowing if they would be alive the next day, Roy Harley believes the uncertainty was more difficult than hunger, cold and thirst.

“We were survival machines, not thinking much about what was happening. We always had to keep going,” adds Harley, who says in the interview that survivors didn’t cry for their dead friends because it made them lose energy.

“We had to survive without worrying about what was happening,” he says.

OR Travel by fare He also spoke with private pilot Mauricio Guerra, who today organizes tours to Vale das Lágrimas, site of the tragic accident on October 13, 1972.

The trip, which includes river crossings and snow camping, takes visitors to the crash site, where you can still find the wreckage of the Fairchild twin-engine turboprop plane chartered by the Uruguayan Air Force to transport rugby players from school Old Christianss Rugby Club. Stella Maris, school in Carrasco, a middle-class neighborhood of Montevideo.

“It is a story that gives rise to a society in every sense, a society of hope, struggle and unity. May this story be studied and known for the struggle for survival. Hope is never lost”, analyzes Guerra .

Location of the accident (photo: Mauricio Guerra)

This mountain guide also says that, in subsequent conversations, the pilot of the rescue helicopter even confessed that he had never believed that there were survivors and “that those people were crazy, that it was impossible for them to cross the mountain range”.

Guerra believes the new film goes beyond the sensationalism of a survival story, “it’s extraordinary and passionate.”

“Every person has to overcome their own mountain range,” he concludes.

I WAIT PHOTOS

  • photo: Netflix/Disclosure
  • photo: reproduction
  • photo: Netflix/Disclosure
  • Mauricio Guerra in the Valley of Tears, Chile (photo: Personal Archive)
  • Mauricio Guerra (photo: Personal Archive)
  • Mauricio Guerra at the accident site (photo: Personal Archive)
  • photo: Maurizio Guerra
  • photo: Maurizio Guerra
  • photo: Maurizio Guerra
  • photo: Maurizio Guerra
  • photo: Maurizio Guerra
  • photo: Maurizio Guerra
  • Gustavo Zerbino, next to his mother, on the day of the rescue (photo: Personal Archive)
  • photo: Maurizio Guerra
  • image: reproduction

Source: Terra

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