J.A. Bayona Is Heading Back To The Andes For A Haunting Follow Up To ‘Society Of The Snow’

‘Society of the Snow’ became one of https://fictionhorizon.com/tag/netflix/ most talked about awards contenders when it dropped in early 2024, pulling audiences into the true story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. On October 12, 1972, the flight took off from Montevideo, Uruguay, carrying 45 people, including 40 passengers and five crew members, before crashing in the Andes. The film followed how a group of survivors, mostly members of a Uruguayan rugby team, endured over two months trapped in one of the harshest environments on the planet.

Director J.A. Bayona built the film with an unusual level of intimacy with the real people behind the story. Bayona and his creative team spoke extensively with victims’ families and survivors while developing the project, working closely with author Pablo Vierci on an approach that had been more than a decade in the making. The result earned the film a spot as Spain’s Oscar entry and cemented Bayona’s reputation for turning devastating true events into deeply human stories.

Now, that chapter is reopening. According to What’s on Netflix, Bayona is returning to the Valley of Tears for a new project called ‘Beyond the Society,’ a three-part docuseries set to release globally on Netflix in 2026 that will explore the aftermath of Flight 571 and the fifty years that followed the tragedy.

Unlike the dramatized feature, this new series is not a behind-the-scenes companion piece. Directed by Carlos Torres, ‘Beyond the Society’ is described as an intense three-part series featuring unprecedented testimonies from survivors and the relatives of those who did not make it home. The framing question driving the series, per the outlet, asks how anyone rebuilds a life after living through something like this.

Bayona shared the emotional spark behind the idea in a statement given to What’s on Netflix, explaining that the idea for ‘Beyond the Society’ came together when the team traveled to the Valley of Tears with the film’s cast, none of whom had ever been there, and realized it was the right way to close an important chapter while thanking those who trusted them with the story. He added that the trip revealed just how deeply intertwined the real survivors had become with the people who brought their fiction to life.

The project reunites key names from the original film’s production. ‘Beyond the Society’ is produced by Belén Atienza, Sandra Hermida, and Bayona himself, and Netflix accompanied the announcement with a first look at behind the scenes stills, showing the cast and crew trekking through the snow covered Andes, Bayona directing on location, and a quiet moment at the memorial cross dedicated to the crash’s victims. It’s a striking visual echo of the original film’s own commitment to shooting on the actual site of the tragedy.

For fans who spent 2024 gripped by the survivors’ story on screen, this docuseries promises something the dramatization never fully could, the real voices of the people who lived it and the families still carrying its weight fifty years later. With Bayona once again at the helm, expectations are already building for how ‘Beyond the Society’ will handle a story this personal and this painful. What do you hope this new documentary series finally gives the Flight 571 survivors and their families a chance to say?