Gustavo Zerbino and Mamadou Kouassi have two main issues in frequent.
They each survived horrifying ordeals — one endured 72 days within the frozen Andes by consuming human flesh after an notorious airplane crash; the opposite suffered brutal imprisonment, extortion and slavery on the African migrant path to Europe.
And they’re each the inspiration for main new movies enjoying at Hollywood’s AFI Fest this week, forward of their submission for subsequent 12 months’s Oscars.
Zerbino drew an prolonged standing ovation in Los Angeles following a screening of “Society of the Snow,” Spain’s official entry for the Academy Awards, which is able to stream on Netflix in January.
“This movie lets you contact with the deep part of your soul, and feel exactly the spirit we had in the mountains,” stated an emotional Zerbino.
The movie portrays the “Miracle of the Andes,” when a airplane carrying an novice Uruguayan rugby group and their relations crashed on the best way to Chile in October 1972.
Thirty-three of the 45 on board survived the preliminary impression, however solely 16 had been left after a ten-week ordeal on an Andean glacier with out meals, shelter, and even heat garments in -22 levels Fahrenheit (-30 Celsius) climate, at an altitude of some 12,000 toes (3,600 meters).
The survivors needed to resort to consuming the flesh of their useless comrades to remain alive.
It has beforehand been dramatized, most famously within the 1993 U.S. movie “Alive,” starring Ethan Hawke.
But the brand new model, from director J.A. Bayona, recounts the story in Spanish utilizing native actors, and locations the emphasis equally on those that died and people who survived.
“In the Andes, we needed to build a caring society. When all the things belonged to everyone, and the only goal was to survive,” stated Zerbino.
“We did not fight each other, because we were fighting death,” he instructed AFP after the screening.
“Io Capitano,” Italy’s official entry for greatest worldwide movie on the Oscars in March and due in U.S. theaters early subsequent 12 months, had its North American premiere Saturday.
Director Matteo Garrone, greatest recognized for mafia drama “Gomorrah,” tells the harrowing story of African migrants earlier than they’ve even reached the perilous Mediterranean crossings that occupy most Western headlines.
His script combines the real-life ordeals of three migrants together with Kouassi, who trekked throughout the Sahara from Ivory Coast round 18 years in the past.
“We spent about one month [going] through the desert. You can see people dying in front of you, children dying because of a lack of water. And you cannot help,” he instructed AFP earlier than the screening.
Even once they reached Libya — a significant transit nation and crossing level for migrants — their ordeal was removed from over.
“We Black people, they used to catch us and put us in prison,” he stated. Once behind bars, “they asked you to call one of your family or relatives to bring money to pay for your freedom. At that time I didn’t have anybody.”
The movie portrays graphic scenes of torture, and Kouassi recollects fellow inmates “killed in the prison, in the cells.”
He escaped solely after being bought “like a slave” to an area who wanted staff to finish masonry work on his property, and ultimately freed him.
Despite the trauma of reliving their ordeals, each males are serving to to advertise their movies, and expressed hope that audiences will take away essential messages.
For Zerbino, his story is “not a tragedy, [though] it has a lot of tragedy; it is not a miracle, [though] it has a lot of miracles.”
Instead, “this is a story of love, friendship, solidarity… a very important message in this difficult moment that the whole world is facing.”
Kouassi hopes that his movie can assist “people understand what we faced before we arrived in Europe,” and even result in a loosening of the journey restrictions on individuals from poorer nations that power them to danger their lives with unlawful crossings within the first place.
“It is a complete disaster,” he stated. “This film has very powerful information to spread all over the world.”
AFI Fest runs till Sunday.
© 2023 AFP