“When I went on the expedition with Numa Turcatti and Daniel Maspons, climbing up the mountain, I took the necklaces and chains of each dead person we found. I took every watch, every ID card, all the papers they may have had in their bags: letters, notes, messages, lists, directions, desires, names, loves. I did the same for all of them. I found Carlos Valeta’s chain, which I gave to his parents. I found the letter Gustavo Nicolich wrote to his girlfriend Rosina, the letter from Arturo Nogueira to his parents, his brothers, and his girlfriend. All that history, all those lives which were cut short on the mountain, I carried in a bag. With time that little bag was getting bulky. I had to organise it – here are all the watches and medals, there the letters and documents, the more intimate and personal papers. When that little bag was too full I transferred it to a larger bag, containing the belongings of twenty-nine amputated lives … After [we left], nobody remained up on that icy mountain, nobody at all, because I carried them all away with me.” – “The Dented Cross with the Broken Arm: Gustavo Zerbino” from Society of the Snow: The Definitive Account of the World’s Greatest Survival Story by Pablo Vierci
LA SOCIEDAD DE LA NIEVE | SOCIETY OF THE SNOW (2023) dir. J. A. Bayona
