Barcelona, Spain, Mar 2 (EFE).- Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, whose ‘Society of the Snow’ will compete for the Oscar for best international film on March 10, believes the movie has a good chance of scooping the prize.

“When I see the trajectory of the film, not only in festivals but the reactions with the press, the audience. I think right now it’s the most (watched) movie on Netflix this year, and it’s a movie shot in Spanish,” he tells EFE in an interview in Barcelona.

“So the more we make the movie to be seen by the Academy, the better, because the reactions have been fantastic so far,” Bayona adds.

But the director of The Orphanage (2007), The Impossible (2012), and A Monster Calls (2016) acknowledges that there is always an element of “mystery” and refuses to be drawn on the chances of his competitors beating his film to the award.

“You never know about the chances of getting an Oscar,” he said.

“There is a moment right before you vote that you need to disconnect from all the noise of the big campaigns,” Bayona explains.

He points out that despite the campaigns for certain movies, voters will “have their moment” when they consider the options and “disconnect from the noise and take a decision.”

“That’s probably why we get so many surprises at awards ceremonies,” he adds.

Bayona believes that his film, which tells the real-life story of a Uruguayan rugby team’s plane crash in the Andes mountains in October, 1972, has a message that “resonates” with modern audiences.

“We live in a world so full of conflict that there is a lot of hope in seeing a story of people that went through such remarkable experiences, that show us the way that together we can defeat all the odds, how we get to know that we are all the same, that we need each other, that we need to take care of each other. That message resonates nowadays,” the filmmaker from Barcelona explains.

‘The Society of the Snow’ is competing for Best International Feature Film against ‘Io Capitano’ by Italian director Matteo Garrone, Japanese production ‘Perfect Days’ by Dutch director Wim Wenders, ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ by Germany’s İlker Çatak, and ‘The Zone of Interest,’ by Jonathan Glazer of the United Kingdom. EFE

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