First Spanish filmmaker to be awarded the Oscar is not José Luis Garci for Start Again as commonly believed. In fact, it was exactly 13 years earlier in the same year that Luis Buñuel was nominated for Best Foreign Film for the film Tristana. To be precise, 1970 was the year when Juan de La Cierva y Hoces, the auto-gyro inventor hailing from Madrid won the oscars for his Dynalens- an optical stabilizer integrated in Tora! Tora! Tora!
He did not get the traditional golden statue but received a plaque awarding him as the dreamer offering the Spaniard nationalistic perspective. And this Sunday, during the 2024 Oscars J.A. Bayona is up against the possibility of turning victorious he feels with his film “The Snow Society”. To be fair, however, his chances are somewhat limited.
Limited Society
Before Bayona and his crew could even begin the first shot of the movie The Snow Society, he knew that his main focus was to pay tribute to the survivors of the Andes tragedy. After 72 days of suffering, 16 people came out alive, and the author recorded more than 100 hours of interviews with 15 surviving ones. It was his task to obtain the consent of these people before the movie was made so that the unfortunate incident was not exploited to produce a run of the mill drama for the television.
In truth, the first person to see the film was Jose Luis “Coche” Inciarte and this was just before his death. This was not the final version but it was sufficient for him to notice the overall sense of the intention behind the project. The other survivors watched the completed version of the film three or four months before its official release and most of them actually take part in the film.
The Cameos in The Snow Society
The scene with Roberto Canessa, real life survivor who appears around two hours into the film, is one of the most interesting. When he is not playing a doctor in the drama, his cardiology expertise comes to the forefront. He shares the scene with Matías Recalt, the actor portraying him in the film. Bayona worked to have the survivors, especially who agreed to come forward, featured in one way or another in the movie.
Nando Parrado appears on the screen even before the end of the film as the person who opened the airport door for the actor supporting him, Agustín Pardella. These small details demonstrate how Bayona sought to pay homage to the real characters that were involved in the events.
In the film, Carlos Paez also appears in a touching moment, as the father of one of the Players, who hears press releases about the survived children, the fans of Cruz. His father, also named Carlos Paez, was a prominent contemporary Uruguayan artist who authored a book about the tragedy succinctly titled between my son and I the moon. Carlos Paez himself has written three volumes depicting his experience in the tragedy.
For the record, the only person who spoke in this film was Ángela, who enacted the role of Panic. Daniel Fernández Strauch appears in the second row of the church scene while José Luis “Coche” Inciarte is in the background of the bar scene and is shown looking at a picture magazine.
This assertion or conclusion can be deduced from sources such as José Luis “Coche” Inciarte’s name, Ramón “Moncho” Sabella, and Gustavo Zerbino’s contributions. Bayona’s documentary vision is further enhanced by the fact that several characters boarded the two planes but only a few were present. However, there were those who allowed the production of The Snow Society film, which is regarded as the best portrayal of the tragedy in cinema history.
Survivors of the Andes were actual survivors of the planes’ crash. Four years after this tragedy occurred, a Mexican film called ‘Survivors of the Andes’ was released. This one didn’t have any actual appearances in the movie and no real cameos.