A film released at the tail end of 2023 will also be among the best of 2024. Society of the Snow arrives on Netflix on Thursday 4 January - when most will watch. As one year becomes another, this true story of the October 1972 Andes flight disaster - previously recounted in Frank Marshall's Alive in 1993 - transcends trauma to become a much-needed celebration of the human spirit.
Making fast work of its near-two-and-a-half-hour running time and starring a great cast of unfamiliar faces, Spain's entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar grips you from the off and doesn't let go - even after the closing credits. Behind the lens is Juan Antonio Bayona, director of the Naomi Watts-starring tsunami drama The Impossible, and he's working at the peak of his powers here, with filming across 138 days in Spain, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina.
"Here we only have our lives. We have to defend them above everything else," is one of the key quotes from Society of the Snow, and Bayona doesn't flinch in his depiction of what was needed to survive a maelstrom of spiralling horror and disappearing hope. Bluntly put, there was no other way. At a remove of 50-plus years, however, accepting that is still a challenge.
Forty-five people were on board Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 from Montevideo, Uruguay to Santiago, Chile. After more than ten weeks, 16 survived. This must-see is the finest of tributes to them all, one destined to help viewers in ways that Bayona, his cast, and crew will never know.
Society of the Snow's closing exhortation to keep taking care of each other is all too easily lost in the blizzard that is modern life, and the best of messages in any year. True North will be easier to find after watching.
