On May 30, 1973, two armed “revolutionaries” hijacked a Colombian plane. The objective was to request the release of 50 political prisoners in Colombia and a large cash ransom. That story was recently detailed in the book The Wretched of the Air by Massimo Di Ricco and now comes to Netflix as a 6-episode miniseries that can already be seen on the platform and that brings a renowned national cast: Mónica Lopera, Christian Tappan , Enrique Carriazo, Marcela Benjumea, Ángela Cano, Carlos Manuel Vesgas and the Argentine Valentín Villafañe, who plays one of the kidnappers, who in the real story, were not Colombians.
For Cristian Tappan it is one of those stories that cannot be believed: “Another of the records we have in Colombia, that of the longest air hijacking in Latin America and it is good that from the audiovisual we can tell our stories and make them international and that they travel, I am one of those who believe that we must make catharsis with our stories and not have a short memory and forget about them.”
Most of the actors did not know about the event that lasted about 55 hours, but the book and a Radio Ambulante podcast called Los aeropiratas, which the author of the book also produced, shed a lot of light on them: “I listened to the podcast and I started to involve more with everything that the story was, how it happened and the characters and the series brings a great power and emotion and I think that attracts much more,” says Villafañe, the actor who represents one of the kidnappers.
The directors were Camilo Prince and Pablo González. For Camilo, the book was the great input to tell this story, which was lost in oblivion. For González it was also discovering that this type of kidnappings occurred a lot at that time, “in Colombia alone there were 17 in a couple of years and with that information we began to look for people with relatives who had experienced these types of kidnappings and that helped us a lot.” , he told EL COLOMBIANO who was present at the premiere.
Enrique Carriazo, another of the protagonists, the manager of the airline (Aerobolivar in the series, SAM in reality), highlights the work of both directors and the writers of the series: “They navigated the depths of history, of what try, what is moving there. As for my character, I understood that double layer that he has and I enjoyed it and let myself be guided by this great team of showrunners,” he said.
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The reality exceeds fiction
When it came to learning the story, Marcela Benjumea, one of the actresses in the series, was also impressed: “Reality surpasses fiction with this, we were not aware of what had happened.” Benjumea plays the secretary of the airline and who particularly acts as the cruel boss of the stewardesses, a character that was perhaps common to see in the early 70s: “I love strange characters and I feel that mine reflects how we were. of evil before and that can help us respect those who continue to stand up for us women.”
That feminine theme is quite strong in the two stewardesses who take ownership of the situation and whose stories we learn about as the kidnapping progresses in time. In the series they are played by Mónica Lopera and Ángela Cano as Bárbara: “I was very surprised by my character through what she said, I wanted to say the lines that she spoke, for example, from the podcast in which I heard her and I asked Camilo (the director) to allow me to do it, it was to give honor to this woman and these heroines who were little recognized for what they did.”
Mónica plays Edilma, a stewardess who is also the mother of three children and who faces this fact with total courage. With the three children who play her children in the series there was great communion and empathy: “I am a mother, so I understood them, it was a divine process with them, it was getting to know them, talking a lot, playing, I brought them cards, lotteries, it was being able to connect to really create everyday life. It was a very brotherly relationship and we created a very maternal bond.”
The production is quite faithful, in terms of settings and costumes, to those early years of the 70s, but it also had technology, because a kidnapping had to be recreated in the air. “My character, says Christian Tappan, spends the entire series sitting in an airplane cabin, of a plane that existed in 1960-something and I just have to believe the story. The LED screens around changed, the clouds passed, the light changed, it was very nice to be able to believe the story.”
This miniseries made in Colombia wants to cross borders and as Camilo, its director, says, “also generate a reflection on the fragility of life, how precious each moment we live is and how quickly we can lose it.”