With Stranded, writer and director Gonzalo Arijon brings together survivors and family members of the 1972 Andes Mountains plane crash for the first time ever. Nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, the powerful documentary features first-hand accounts of the harrowing 72-day ordeal.

Players, family members, and friends of the Old Christians rugby team of Stella Maris College left Montevideo, Uruguay on Friday, October 13^th, 1972, to play a friendly match in Santiago, Chile. The plane, carrying a total of forty-five passengers, crashed in the remote mountainous region bordering Chile and Argentina. By the eighth day, eighteen passengers had died. The remaining twenty-seven faced unspeakable hardship for over two months in their struggle to survive.

In 1974, English writer Piers Paul Read wrote Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. Based on interviews with the survivors, the book was made into a feature-length film by Frank Marshall in 1993. It is with Arijon, a friend of many of the passengers, that the story of the survivors now comes full circle.

Over thirty years have passed, turning the tragedy into history. Now, Arijon brings together all sixteen survivors of the crash, along with their own children and family members. They journey back to the fateful place and collectively tell their story in detail, revealing the then as well as the now. Arijon deftly weaves their narratives together, giving us an unparalleled account of the experience. The cinematography, by Oscar nominee Cesar Charlone (City of God, Blindness), adds a sense of gritty reality to the film, with recreations of the ordeal shot on super 16mm film.

In such an intimate telling, almost every sentence the men speak is weighted with over thirty years of reflection and maturity. And yet events, feelings, and fears are recalled as if they had just happened. It is hard to ignore the spiritual dimension of the experience. Near the beginning, survivor Roberto Canessa ponders the reasons why he survived and not others: "How does destiny work? What is its formula? What is the equation that underlies this sort of logic?"

Most of the passengers on board were Catholic. As they moved through the ordeal, their faith was tested to an extreme level. As the days passed, some got angry with God. Some doubted His existence. Some wondered if He would do anything to help them. Some didn't care one way or another. When the survivors ran out of food, they made the painful decision of eating the bodies of their dead friends to survive. This was a life-giving and life-changing experience for the men. Some likened it to Holy Communion: "Christ died for us. He left us his flesh and blood in order to save us." Hymns were sung to pass the time and as a way of asking God for help.

After several weeks, the remaining survivors had almost lost hope. Many considered dying a more attractive option to living. And then the unthinkable happened, the unbelievable. The unstoppable tenacity of the human spirit would push through the interminable whiteness of snow and grasp hold of life again.

Stranded is in Spanish with English subtitles, which are hard to read at times. The running time is just over two hours. The film is definitely worth the watch. To relive a human story so powerful and penetrating is to inject new vigor into our own lives. And to see the good that can come of tragedy is a testament to God's unshakable promises.

As Canessa puts it in the film: "I learned when everything feels hopeless, if you wait a little, sometimes, in the walls that seemed to offer no way out, doors you never imagined may appear if you know how to wait."