Society of the Snow
Director: J.A. Bayona

In 1972 a Uruguayan plane bound for Santiago in Chile crashed high in the snowbound Andes. It was carrying 40 passengers and five crew. Sixteen of them survived in freezing conditions, even though it was 10 weeks before they were, largely through their own efforts, finally rescued. Since then, there have been numerous books and films. The first account, Piers Paul Read’s 1974 Alive, written with the survivors’ co-operation, sold five million copies and was the basis for a 1993 film with Ethan Hawke and John Malkovich; the latest dramatised documentary, Society of the Snow, streaming on Netflix, has just become its most-watched film, with 22.9 million global views in the first week of January alone.