DEADLINE: J.A., you bought the rights around the end of shootingThe Impossible.
BAYONA: The story is very popular in the Spanish-speaking world.
And I grew up watching interviews on television with the survivors.
‘Society of the Snow’Netflix
But my surprise was when I read Pablo Viercis book, while researching forThe Impossible.
I was in shock, because I was so moved by a story that I thought I knew.
The book was published because 35 years after the accident not even the survivors recognized themselves in the tale.
Director J.A. Bayona on the red carpet forSociety of the Snowat Venice.Kate Green/Getty Images for Netflix
And the big challenge was, how can I get this spiritual book into a script?
Because scripts are about dialogue and action, and I was interested in the inner life of the characters.
We hear his diary entries after the crash.
Thats the idea Im talking about.
The ones that were dying, saying, Use the only thing that I have left, my body.
and [producer] Belen Atienza, and [producer] Sandra Hermida, J.A.
and I spoke with the families, and the brothers and sisters of the deceased.
They understand now what happened, 51 years later.
DEADLINE: With Numa, because its his voice narrating, you dont expect him to pass away.
Was that a story you put together from what the other survivors told you?
Or was it actual diary that Numa wrote?
I think I had a good idea of who Numa was.
I think that hes still a mystery nowadays, some of the decisions he made on the mountain.
Which raises a question, what is the sense in that?
Whats the meaning of that?
But hes remembered as the best one, and he died 12 days before the rescue.
So, I really like that question there, because thats the big question in life, in art.
What is the meaning of life?
VIERCI: What J.A.
In other situations, the living dont need the dead to survive.
There is a document written by one of the passengers, Gustavo Nicolich.
He died in the avalanche, on the 29th of October.
He wrote, If you need my body, I will be happy to give it to you.
So, its a unique situation, where there are survivors because there are dead guys.
DEADLINE: Tell me about the decision to make this a Spanish language film.
Its culturally so important but I also imagine it made getting financing harder.
BAYONA: Yeah, it made the financing impossible.
VIERCI: The Spanish, I think, is something new to audiences today, in 2023.
BAYONA: We were super-perfectionist in trying to get the Spanish from the 70s.
And some of the actors were from Argentina, and Pablo here was on set correcting them.
So, we shot it chronologically, in real locations, the same locations.
You cannot tell the story without understanding the context of what is to be in the Andes.
And they are still in contact with the survivors now, the actors, still talking to them.
So, they had all the information.
And then we gave them the chance of going through the same experience.
Some of the actors lost more than 20 kilos.
DEADLINE: 20 kilos?
So, we were going through the same things they went through, of course with a distance.
Which basically is what Pablo was telling you.
DEADLINE: Pablo, how much of the shoot did you personally experience?
VIERCI: I had been with J.A.
and Belen and Sandra since 2016, so I knew a lot.
I accompanied the shooting, and it seemed for me that I was behind J.A.
Bayona and I was behind Leonardo da Vinci.
Its something very strange for me, because every day began with something very, very rough.
DEADLINE: It must have felt very emotionally heavy just to be there, at the crash site.
Tell me about that.
BAYONA: Yes, we went there three times.
We couldnt shoot much there because its not a safe place.
There are still some remains there from the plane.
There is a grave full of objects.
Its unbelievable, people go there to leave objects in the summer.
I dont know how many is in feet, but it was 2500 meters.
This is where we placed the fuselage, and we shot most of the scenes there.
DEADLINE:How did you cast these unknown actors?
The other day the casting director said, You saw 2,000 takes.
DEADLINE:Pablo, were you in involved with that process?
VIERCI: Yes, I was, when they did it in Uruguay.
BAYONA: When we went to meeting them in person, then we went to Uruguay.
I went to Montevideo, Pablo was there, and most of them had to come from Argentina.
Of course, immediately they were best friends.
Im still friends with some of the people who didnt do the film.
The decisions came from J.A., but I was whispering in his ear.
BAYONA: There were two ideas behind the fact that we didnt want to have famous faces.
And not having popular faces would add realism, to make it look more like a documentary.
DEADLINE: Pablo, how did you feel sitting with the survivors and families in the first screening?
Then he died a few months ago.
came to Uruguay to show him the film, because he was sick.
made the commitment to show the film to everybody.
What do you think he felt about the film?
BAYONA: It was very impressive to see how calm he was in front of death.
He had a near-death experience during the avalanche.
And what he was very impressed about in the film was the realism.
It was ordinary people doing something extraordinary.
They rejected this idea of heroism.
All of them were happy to have a movie that was able to communicate that to the audience.
Jose, the guy that died in July, he spoke a lot about Numa to J.A.
He knew perfectly that Numa sacrificed himself he says that word, sacrificed for the others.
He was very happy that the voiceover was Numas.
When we showed the film to all the families, it was the value of confidence.
Theyve known me since we were children, most of them.
But they didnt know J.A., and Belen and Sandra.
They had confidence because of one email that J.A.
in 2016 and they were confident that J.A.
was doing a journey with them, and with the deceased, with the 45 of that trip.
They were confident because J.A.
was going to do something authentic, the truth.
This is why we shot in real locations.
And in that sense, I really like to blend fiction with reality on set.
He has a very famous face, so I thought, who has that face?
His son has his face.
That is just incredible.
BAYONA: The movie is full of details like that.
That guy is the real nephew of the real Numa Turcatti.
And we are shooting in the same house where Numa Turcatti lived.
But after 50 years, I think it was a good moment.
This is the closest [version] of what happened, of that experience.
As Numa said, Tell the story.
You go out of the cinema, or the TV set, and its your story.
You are comparing your story with, what would I do in that situation?
I think its a story that never ends.
And the film is marvelous because it opens doors that are closed.
DEADLINE: How do you think making this film has affected you personally?
VIERCI: For me, I am older than J.A., really older.
This is something more than a film.
Because the survivors had the need to tell the story again, as much as I had it.
I consider myself very lucky to have found this story, and to have the privilege to tell it.
