The survivors of the 1972 plane crash that serves as the source material for the new movie Society of the Snow, directed by J.A. Bayona, have opened up about the film and how it feels different from previous adaptations.
Gustavo Zerbino said that he felt like he was being dropped into “boiling water” (via The Independent) whilst still praising the film, noting, “Fortunately, that feeling ended in two and a half hours.”
“When he showed us the drafts of what he was working on, it sent shivers down our spines; our hearts stopped,” Zerbino said. “I mean, we already saw that it was very real, very powerful, and we saw that there was genius at work.”
“We always felt something was missing,” he added of previous attempts to adapt the accident into a movie, “Society of the Snow is the book that filled in that missing piece.”
The film is based on Pablo Vierci’s book of the same name, who said, “I was always attracted to the possibility and the need to tell it from the point of the view of the dead. This is a story of 45 individuals providing a window through which we can observe how they endured major adversities and built a society where compassion and mercy prevailed.”
Society of the Snow champions the spirits of those who passed away in the accident, and Zerbino is grateful for that, noting, “I have a commitment, a commitment from before leaving the mountain to be a witness and transmit the legacy of my dead friends.”
Check out the trailer for Society of the Snow below.
