J.A. Bayona: Last News

The story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, the plane that crashed over the Andes mountains in 1972, mainly carrying a young team of Uruguayan rugby players expecting to play a match in Chile, has been told several times. Perhaps most famously in 1993’s “Alive” and the stellar documentaries “I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash” and “Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains,” to name just a few.

J.A. Bayona and his producing partners spent years attempting to finance “Society of the Snow.” Despite his track record, no one, no studio, no production company from his native Spain wanted to back it.

The story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 is one of the most well-known flight disasters of all time. Many films, TV shows, books, and more were based on the story of the Uruguayan rugby team who chartered a flight over the Andes mountains and crashed with seemingly no hope of survival.

Did anyone expect J.A. Bayona to follow up “Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom” with an altogether different kind of survival thriller? Maybe not, but “Society Of The Snow” has garnered a lot of positive word of mouth as it made the festival rounds this Fall.

The story has been told several times in the famous 1990s movie, “Alive,” the excellent documentary “Stranded,” and hell, arguably even “Yellowjackets” borrows its core premise from the story of Air Force Flight 571, which went down in the Chilean Andes mountains in 1972, filled with 45 passengers many of them who were young soccer players on their way to a match (and yes, there’s a cannibalism element to it all). Continue reading ‘Society Of The Snow’ Teaser Trailer: J.A.

EXCLUSIVE: Spain’s J.A. Bayona has carved a niche for himself in survivalist drama, starting with 2012’s The Impossible, in which a family’s dream trip to Thailand becomes a nightmare when a tsunami destroys their luxury resort. It was based on a true story, unlike 2018’s Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, which nevertheless featured human beings facing unimaginable odds when confronted by a terrifying new breed of carnivorous dinosaurs.

Venice International Film Festival has announced which film will be closing the event in September.

In a season where helmers for “Succession,” “House of the Dragon,” “Better Call Saul,” “Andor” and “The Last of Us” will likely dominate the Emmy conversation, there is one director who deserves a bigger spotlight and, frankly, a nomination, J.A. Bayona.

J.A. Bayona, director of “The Impossible” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” is close to wrapping production on the Spanish leg of Netflix’s “Society of the Snow,” (“La sociedad de la nieve”), one of the Spanish-speaking world’s most ambitious upcoming features for 2023.Turning on a 1972 air crash in the Andes that forced its survivors to highly extreme measures, the film, marks Bayona’s return to Spanish-language filmmaking for the first time in 16 years since his 2006 feature debut, “The Orphanage.” What looks set to be a celebration of extraordinary human fortitude in a harrowing intensely physical disaster movie harks back, however, to Bayona’s “The Impossible,” for many still the director’s finest achievement.  “Society of the Snow,” which hosted a set visit for select media a few weeks back, was shot in Andalusia’s Sierra Nevada, mainland Spain’s highest mountain range, using the 15,000-pound fuselage wreckages of three Fairchild Hiller FH-227 passenger aircrafts.