ARTE Distribution

This is one of the greatest survival stories of all time : it's about a group of young men who managed to survive for 72 days at an altitude of 4.000 metres, in the heart of the Andes, after their plane had crashed there in October 1972... The sixteen survivors tell their story as never before.

As a filmmaker and childhood friend of several of them, Gonzalo ARIJON had undertaken the task of making an in-depth documentary film - something never before attempted - with the hole group of Survivors.
But beyond this " unbelievable story of cannibalism ", the film attempts to bring out the very essence of this experience, one both intensely intimate and wholly collective, a strong parable on the human condition.
This cinematographic challenge has been made possible because of the distance in time since it all happened, and because of our friendship which made a pact of absolute trust between us.
Also there has been the complicity of Cesar Charlone (Cinematographer of films such as "City of God", "The Constant Gardener", co-director of "El Bano del Papa" selected this year at the Cannes Film Festival), another member of this childhood friends who ought, by rights, to have been on that same flight.
With Charlone's sensitive camera, the director has attempted to suggest the closed universe described by the protagonists, to materialize the indescribable.

*2007: Joris Ivens Award at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival (Amsterdam - Netherlands)*
*2008: 
Grand Prize at the Boulder International Film Festival (Colorado - USA) 
Jury Award for the Best International Documentary at Docville (Louvain -Belgium) 
Audience Award of Documentary Features at the Miami Film Festival (Miami - USA) 
Jury Prize of the Best Documentary Feature at the Sarasota Film Festival (Florida - USA) *