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Gonzalo Arijón waited patiently for more than 30 years to make this film. He knew that time has healing powers. “The idea of the film is to show what they felt then and what they feel now,” says Arijón. To do this, he succeeded in persuading all 16 Survivors to work on the film, the first time this has ever been done. Each of them gave Arijón 24 hours of their time, during which they chatted, ate, joked and mused, face to camera, about the deeper meaning of what had happened to them: why did it happen? why me? who decides on who survives and who doesn't?
Perhaps Arijón allowed time to elapse so as to be able to delve deeper into the mystery of what happened “up there.” He also worked with the sons and daughters of some of the Survivors, as if they could help give some sense to those 72 days which passed by until their fathers were rescued. Lala Canessa, Roberto's daughter, worked on the film in the art department, Hilario Canessa and Gustavo Zerbino, acted the parts of some of the young men involved, and with many of the Survivors present at different times during the shoot, everybody often felt that this was not a film but something altogether real. It's worth mentioning the extraordinary work of César Charlone (Director of Photography on films such as City of God and The Constant Gardener), which was crucial in “materializing the indescribable,” those sequences in which some of the highpoints of the Survivors' ordeal are recreated with a dream-like quality.
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