In 1972, a Uruguayan rugby team is on a small plane bound for Chile. While crossing the Andes Mountains, the plane loses power and crashes. The crash splits the plane in two, and as the survivors attempt to come to grips with the situation, they remain convinced that a rescue plane will find them very soon. When they learn through a patched-together radio that the search parties have left them for dead, the survivors must find a way to go on living with hardly any food or enough shelter to survive the brutally cold temperatures. As they struggle to remain alive and to take care of the wounded, the survivors are faced with a terrible dilemma: With no food, their only means of maintaining enough strength to find help is to eat from the flesh of their dead companions. Faced with the slimmest chances of survival, Nando (Ethan Hawke) must put aside his grief over the loss of loved ones who died and find the strength and willpower to find a way to rescue himself and those who have continued to cling to life several weeks after the crash.