J.A. Bayona Talks Desire To Take Spectators On Same Journey As Survivors In Air Crash Drama ‘Society Of The Snow’ – Contenders London
Spanish director J.A. Bayona talked about the long and arduous journey to bringing air crash survival drama Society of the Snow to fruition at Deadline Contenders London.
The immersive drama, which is Spain’s Best International Feature Film entry for the 96th Academy Awards, revisits the experiences of the 16 surviving members of the Uruguay rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in Argentina in 1972.
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“There is the question at the end of the trailer that says, ‘Who are we in the mountains?’ and basically to me the whole process of making this film was a process of trying to understand who they were in the mountains,” said Bayona.
The screenplay is adapted from the 2009 book The Snow Society: The Definitive Account of the World’s Greatest Survival Story by Pablo Vierci, who knew many of the people caught up in the tragedy.
Bayona said Vierci’s work had helped him see the story in a fresh light.
“This is a very popular story in the Spanish-speaking world, a massive story, in Latin America and Spain. Alive, the bestseller, was published only one year after the disaster. I think it’s a book we all had at home when we were kids,” said Bayona.
‘Then La Sociedad de la Nieve by Pablo Vierci was published in Spain 12 years ago, and I became obsessed,” he continued. “As I said, it’s a very popular story. There have been like 20 books done on this tragedy, two films and lots of documentaries, but it was not until I read Pablo Vierci’s book that I was able to see how big, how massive this story is, even on a spiritual, psychological and philosophical level.”
Bayona said he had never been interested in the action element of the film.
“I was obsessing in the drama and trying to try to tell the story of these men with the maximum realism and maximum respect in order to make everyone go through the experience like being in the plane inside with them, and by feeling empathy towards them, understand what they did and what they went through.”
Society of the Snow marks Bayona’s return to Spanish-language filmmaking for the first time since the 2007 title The Orphanage, which also represented Spain. It marks the first time Netflix, which fully financed the film, has had a Spanish-language feature represent Spain at the Oscars.
Bayona was joined on stage by his longtime producers Sandra Hermida and Belén Atienza.
Atienza talked about the film’s emotional screening in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo for the survivors and the families of people who perished in the crash.
“We had like a theatre with 300 people only. For us, it was incredible after 10 years to be sitting down in that theatre that was totally charged with energy, with emotion,” she said. “We were so scared and I think that they were scared because they didn’t know what they were going to feel.”
“It was one of the most emotional moments of the 10 years of doing the film. When the film finished that we were all in tears, like everyone else in the theatre. There was a silence and there was some applause and everyone was relieved.”
Having officially world premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Society of the Snow has since made its Spanish-language debut at San Sebastian, where it won the Audience Award.
It next plays Out of Competition at Spain’s Sitges Film Festival, Thierry Frémaux’s Lumière Film Festival in Lyon and at AFI Fest. Netflix is due to release the film by the end of the year.
Check out the panel video above.
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