As we eagerly await for the major announcements next Tuesday and now that we cleared up the whole festival opener situation, we now learn that it is a Netflix production in with J.A. Bayona‘s Society of the Snow that will close out the 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival. Set to preem on September 9th after the awards are handed out, this film will instantly be compared Frank Marshall’s 1993 film Alive, but this subtitled version cast Uruguayan and Argentine actors – exponentially gives the film some cred. Shot back in November of 2021, Netflix was onboard from the get-go on this project which was shot in Andalusia’s Sierra Nevada. This film could be headed to Toronto or Donostia-San Sebastian next.
In 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which had been chartered to bring Montevideo’s Old Christians Rugby Club team to Chile, crashed at an altitude of 11,712 feet in the Andes. Of its 45 passengers – which consisted mostly of the rugby team, friends and family – only 29 survived. Without food, the survivors, who belonged to Uruguay’s elite, were forced to eat the flesh of the deceased to stay alive. 19 survived an avalanche. 72 days after the crash, 16 finally made it out alive.
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
