Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors | Documentary Film| Independent Lens | PBS (2024)

About the Documentary

On Friday, October 13, in 1972, charter flight 571 took off from Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital city, carrying a boisterous team of wealthy college athletes to a rugby match in Chile. But what was supposed to be a first taste of freedom away from home turned out to be a much more sinister and life-altering journey.

Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors is the tale of flight 571, which never made it to Chile. Instead, the plane crash-landed in a desolate glacial valley, high in the Andean cordillera—a chain of rugged, snow-covered peaks stretching from Bogata, Colombia to Punta Arenas, Chile.

Fifteen people died, including the pilot. Five were badly wounded. But—miracle of miracles—29 lived. “How arbitrary it was! Why had some people been destroyed, while others had escaped with just a black eye?” asks survivor Jose Luis “Coche” Inciarte. As the survivors learn during their ordeal, there are no easy answers.

Three decades after the crash, the 16 survivors, interviewed in the film, revive long-buried emotions and intimate memories. They take viewers, moment by agonizing moment, through their suffering, as hope turns into despair and as hours stretch into days and weeks. And finally, just before disbelief hardens into bitterness and fear turns to madness, the unexpected happens.

Up on the mountain, a new kind of social order forms amongst the survivors, making the best use of everyone’s individual energy and talents. One person sews a sleeping bag from the airplane’s insulation; another dispenses a dollop of toothpaste every night as their “dessert.” Someone else works the radio—where they hear the dreadful news that the search for their downed plane has been called off.

With death by starvation drawing ever nearer, the survivors arrive at a universal conclusion—that in order to live, they must break a taboo: They must find their nourishment in the flesh of their teammates who have died alongside them in the snowy wilderness. The group closes ranks around the terrible, life-saving decision: a decision that sustains them over the 72-day odyssey and helps them fuse into one organism dedicated to one purpose—survival.

Before he perishes in an avalanche halfway through their ordeal, rugby team captain Marcelo urges his fellow players to think of this necessary sacrilege as “holy communion.” Ultimately, each man still clearly wrestles with the act more than 30 years after the fact. “We all found it hard. What we were doing was unthinkable. But I made up my mind; I chose to live,” says Alvaro Mangino.

The story of these survivors is a parable about the human condition and the possibilities contained within it. The group’s strength comes from the solidarity of purpose and the extraordinary sacrifices made by individuals to benefit the whole. When the two strongest survivors, their knapsack packed with frozen human flesh, embark on the final, grueling, 10-day expedition, crossing miles of ice fields, crevices and peaks to find help for their stranded companions, they are sustained by their teammates’ trust and faith in them. On their frail shoulders rides the collective fate of all they hold most dear.

The Filmmakers

Gonzalo Arijón
A childhood friend of many of the young men who survived the crash of flight 571, Gonzalo Arijón was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1956. A student of film and anthropology, Arijón moved to France in 1979, where he now lives.

During the past two decades, the award-winning filmmaker has made numerous documentaries including Lulu’s Brazil: Managing a Dream; Far, Very Far From Rome…; The “Dark Side” of Milosevic; Carl Lewis/Mike Powell 43’ and 52’; Goodbye “Coquelicots;” Rio de Janeiro: a “Vertical War” and For These Eyes.

Marc Silvera
After a varied career in the audiovisual sector, Marc Silvera founded Ethan Productions in July 2000. The company has produced several documentaries including the series Sporting Duels for Arte/TV5; Tony Blair, directed by Deborah Ford; and Maracana, directed by Amar Ahrab for Ethan Productions/France 5.

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