'Society of the Snow' trailer recreates the real plane crash survival tale

"Yellowjackets" is fiction. This actually happened.
By
Shannon Connellan
 on 
Men sit beside a crash plane in the snow.
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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.

Topics Netflix Trailers

A black and white image of a person with a long braid and thick framed glasses.
Shannon Connellan

Shannon Connellan is Mashable's UK Editor based in London, formerly Mashable's Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives in the Creel House. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about everything (but not anything) across entertainment, tech, social good, science, and culture. Especially Australian horror.


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