Society of the Snow

J. A. Bayona's Society of the Snow is the second narrative feature reconstruction of the Andes flight disaster of October 1972, after Frank Marshall's Alive (1993). The Bayona film is based directly on Pablo Vierci's 2008 oral history of the same name, which collected first-person testimony from all sixteen survivors over decades of interviews, material previously unavailable to Marshall's earlier production.

The film was selected as Spain's submission for the 96th Academy Awards and earned nominations for Best International Feature Film and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. It dominated the 2024 Goya Awards with twelve wins out of thirteen nominations (including Best Film and Best Director) the most successful single-film tally in the Goyas' history. It also became one of Netflix's most-watched non-English-language releases ever, peaking at over forty million views in its first ten days.

Bayona shot the film at high altitude in the actual Valle de las Lágrimas in the Andes, on Sierra Nevada, and on built sets at Madrid's Ciudad de la Tele studios over two and a half years of pre-production and shoot. The cast is composed almost entirely of unknown Argentine and Uruguayan actors (Enzo Vogrincic, Agustín Pardella, Matías Recalt) chosen partly for their physical resemblance to the real survivors, several of whom served as on-set consultants. The cinematography is by Pedro Luque and the score by Michael Giacchino.