Director J.A. Bayona and members of the “Society of the Snow” cast traveled to the Andes crash site where they met with the real people behind the story told on screen.
Netflix
More than two years after the gripping film Society of the Snow introduced a new generation of viewers to the tragedy of the 1972 Andes plane crash, director and producer J.A. Bayona returns to the story with the three-part Netflix documentary series Beyond Society.
While the film dramatized the crash of Flight 571 and the Uruguayan rugby team’s ordeal, stranded for 72 days in the mountains and facing unimaginable decisions, the nonfiction series shifts its focus to what came after the rescue, when the survivors came home. It also centers on the families of those who died, exploring the grief and public attention in the aftermath of a disaster often remembered as the “Miracle of the Andes.”
Carlos Torres directs Beyond Society, which he co-created with Bayona (The Impossible, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom). Bayona, Sandra Hermida and Belén Atienza produce.
Netflix announced the series will have its global premiere in Official Selection at the San Sebastián International Film Festival before the streamer releases it worldwide on December 18. It also dropped the first trailer for Beyond Society.
“Beyond Society” returns to the Andes crash site.
Netflix
The Story After Rescue
Beyond Society picks up after the rescue that closed Bayona’s 2023 dramatic feature. The documentary brings together, for the first time in one project, surviving passengers, relatives of the people who did not return, and the writers and filmmakers who helped introduce the story to audiences around the world.
The participants include Pablo Vierci, whose book inspired Society of the Snow, and Piers Paul Read, author of Alive. Frank Marshall, who directed the 1993 feature Alive about the Andes tragedy, also appears alongside Bayona.
Bayona and members of the Society of the Snow cast travel back to the Andes crash site, creating an encounter between the people who survived the disaster and the actors who portrayed their experience.
For the survivors, the hardest period did not necessarily end when rescuers arrived. They returned to families mourning loved ones, intense international media coverage and enduring questions about how they survived. Beyond Society follows how they carried that experience through the next 50 years while the story inspired books, documentaries and films.
The Film’s Global Reach
Bayona’s Spanish-language Society of the Snow drew from Vierci’s book, which collected testimony from survivors and gave attention to the passengers who died before the rescue.
The director had pursued the project for years and built it around direct conversations with the survivors. Bayona conducted more than 50 hours of interviews and connected the actors with the men they would play, while keeping the production in Spanish and casting performers from Uruguay and Argentina.
Netflix released Society of the Snow worldwide on January 4, 2024, after a limited theatrical run. The film led the streamer’s Global Top 10 for two consecutive weeks and placed in Netflix’s Top 10 in 93 countries. In its first 11 days, the film drew 51 million views and entered Netflix’s list of its 10 most-watched non-English-language films.
The film also earned major awards recognition. It won 12 Goya Awards, including best film and best director for Bayona, and received Academy Award nominations for Best International Feature Film and makeup and hairstyling. It also won San Sebastián’s audience award in the Perlak section, receiving the festival’s highest recorded audience score for that honor.
Beyond Society premieres on Netflix on December 18.
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