2024-01-07 18:02:00
This is probably one of the most famous plane crashes in history. More than 50 years following the fatal crash of Flight 571, which was carrying a team of Uruguayan rugby players to Santiago, Chile in 1972, its legend continues to be told. Since January 4, Netflix has offered a new moving adaptation of the “drama of the Andes” with Le Cercle des Neiges. Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible), this petrifying dramatic film answers without judgment the following question: how far is Man capable of going when his own life is threatened? The survivors, forced at the time to live on one of the highest peaks of the Andes at an altitude of 3,500 meters and to practice cannibalism to survive, continue to speak of the catastrophe with courage, and to transmit their memories of the most traumatic days of their existence.
The Circle of Snow: one of the survivors took part in the Netflix film
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It was Friday the 13th in 1972, when the Fairchild F-227 carrying the Old Christians rugby team from Montevideo crashed in the Andes due to pilot error. Of the 45 people on board, only 16 escaped alive. We had to survive the paralyzing cold, the hell of the high mountains, serious injuries, but also fight once morest food deprivation. To the point of committing the unthinkable: eating the flesh of his comrades so as not to find himself among the corpses. To transcribe this extraordinary story with the greatest possible realism, director Juan Antonio Bayona was supported by Fernando Parado, one of the 16 survivors of the crash. Now aged 74, he gives lectures on motivation. In 2008, the man who also lost his mother and sister in the accident delivered his own version of the facts for the first time with emotion and courage in the book The Miracle of the Andes.
Three survivors who led brilliant careers
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Questioned by the HuffPost, Fernando Parado returned to the reasons which prompted him to participate in the Netflix film The Circle of Snows. “I don’t feel the need to share my story, but I keep getting asked. It’s engraved in my flesh, I’m a survivor. You only live once, and because of this tragedy, I “I decided that the second part of my life was going to be memorable. And being part of this project was exciting,” he said. At the 2023 Venice Film Festival, the former rugby player walked the red carpet for the film Circle of Snow alongside Carlos Paez Rodriguez and Roberto Canessa, two other survivors of the accident. Together to support this film which highlights a wonderful lesson in resilience, defending victims more than judging them for their actions.
Today, Carlos Paez Rodriguez, who was only 18 years old at the time of the crash, is a brilliant businessman, while Roberto Canessa practices pediatric cardiology in Montevideo. After resigning themselves to feeding on the victims of the cabin, the two survivors surveyed the mountain range for ten days, a final expedition which allowed them to find help and save some of their comrades following 72 days of nightmare . Among the survivors, Roy Harley, aged 20 at the time, weighed only 38 kilos on December 22, 1972, compared to 85 kilos before the accident. Among the other survivors, we can cite José Pedro Algorta, a 72-year-old economist who also published his own version of the facts in 2016 in Into the Mountains. There is also Álvaro Mangino, Ramón Sabella, Adolfo “Fito” Strauch who, unlike the others, do not wish to be in the light.
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The ghosts of Flight 571 obtain absolution from Pope Paul VI
When the acts of cannibalism leaked to the press, the Chilean and Uruguayan Churches both granted absolution to the survivors, as did Pope Paul VI. The vast majority of survivors have mostly spoken regarding the circumstances of this tragedy. A first film, called The Survivors, recounted their adventures at the cinema in 1993. A museum of the Andes 1972 even saw the light of day in Montevideo to “highlight essential values (solidarity, teamwork, setting objectives in the life, self-control, support etc.)”, we read on the website.
Article written in collaboration with 6Médias
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