Bayona returns to Andes story with Beyond Society docuseries
Juan Antonio Bayona brought the next chapter of the Andes survival story to the San Sebastián International Film Festival on September 23, when his three-part documentary series 'Beyond Society' ('Más Allá de la Sociedad') had its world premiere, Variety reported. The series was created by Bayona and Carlos Torres and will arrive on Netflix on December 18, Netflix said.
It starts where Bayona's dramatised feature 'Society of the Snow' stops. The rescue. That earlier film, released in 2023, recounts the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in the Andes Mountains, in which 16 of the 45 people on board survived, Variety reported.
'Beyond Society' asks what came next. Sixteen people came home. The series follows that return across more than 50 years in Carrasco, Uruguay, where the families of the dead and the living have lived side by side, Variety reported.
It is a non-fiction account, told across three episodes, of how the survivors rebuilt their lives after the crash. Netflix describes it as an exploration of life after Flight 571, picking up the human story once the search teams had left the mountain.
The festival lists 'Beyond Society' as a Spanish production, according to its official daily programme, San Sebastian Festival. The dialogue is in Spanish, French, English and Italian, with English and Spanish subtitles, the same listing said.
For viewers who know only the rescue, this means a longer and quieter story. Not the days on the mountain, but the decades afterwards in one neighbourhood. The parents, brothers, sisters and neighbours who waited, and then had to find a way to live together again.
