Naufragés des Andes

France

Synopsis

On 12th October 1972, a Uruguayan army plane left Montevideo for Santiago in Chile. The plane was chartered by the “Christian Brothers”, a rugby team from Carrasco, an upmarket suburb of Montevideo. These adolescents were supposed to go and play a friendly match and – accompanied by a few parents and friends – spend a pleasant weekend on the shores of the Pacific. There were forty-five people on board …
The bad weather in the Andes forced the plane to land in Mendoza, an average-sized town on the Argentinean
slopes of the cordillera. On 13th October, the plane took off once again. At 15:30, the pilot transmitted his position and his altitude to the control tower in Santiago. But when the tower attempted to communicate with the aircraft a minute later, there was no reply … Chile, Argentina and Uruguay joined forces to search for the plane. But there had been exceptionally heavy snowfall in the Andes and the plane’s cabin was painted white... Therefore, there
was little chance of finding the plane and even less chance that one of the forty-five passengers had survived the crash ...
The tenth day after the catastrophe, the searches were abandoned. The survivors learnt this through a radio that was still functioning … And on the tenth day, there was nothing left to eat …
Ten weeks later, a Chilean shepherd who was watching his flock in the valley located in the foothills of the Andes, caught sight of the outline of two men on the other side of a torrent. They were gesticulating frantically then fell to their knees, their arms wide open. The shepherd, who took them for tourists – even for terrorists – left. However, the next day he came back to the same spot and saw the figures who were still there. The sound of the water was so loud on the banks of the river that it was impossible for the three men to hear each other. The shepherd then threw a piece of paper and a pen, wrapped in a handkerchief, over the torrent. The two bearded men in rags, wrote something on the paper and sent everything back to the shepherd: “We’re from a plane that crashed in the mountains. Fourteen of our friends are still alive up there… Where are we?”
Seventy days after the crash, Fernando Parrado (20 years old) and Roberto Canessa (19 years old) had
travelled 70 kilometres in the mountains, crossing three quarters of the Andes cordillera on foot and crossing summits more than 4,000 metres high with no equipment other than rugby boots… Seventytwo days of hell, during which some had lost their mother and others their sister, and all of them some of their best friends. In total, there were sixteen survivors. Reports world-wide spoke of the «survivors of the century», and – maybe because they were rescued two days before Christmas – the “miracle of the Andes”.
Four days after their rescue, in a heated press conference, the survivors took the plunge: “… the day came when we had nothing left to eat, and we said that Christ, by offering his flesh and blood during the Last Supper, had shown us the way by indicating that we had to do likewise: take his flesh and blood, incarnated in our friends who had died in the crash ... It was a personal communion for each one of us … It’s what helped us to survive …”. One of our greatest taboos had been defied. And made public.
The whole world was in shock.
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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Gonzalo Arijón

Nominations and Awards

  • European Documentary Award – Prix Arte 2008