Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed in the Mountains

Gonzalo Arijon’s Stranded documents the same true story dramatized in Frank Marshall’s 1993 film Alive. In 1972, a plane full of Uruguayan students headed to a rugby match in Chile crashed in the Andes Mountains. Sixteen of them survived avalanches and malnutrition for two-and-a-half months in the cold, unforgiving climate; but only by slowly cannibalizing their dead friends. Unlike Alive, the documentary Stranded does not feature a sick-ass plane-crash scene, but both movies tell this compelling story of human perseverance in an arid and poky fashion. Stranded keeps such a respectful distance from exploitation that it feels remote, and the excess of cheap re-enactment footage doesn’t help. The real drama is in the haunted faces of the survivors recounting their horrific ordeal and returning to the crash site.