Remember the October 1972 air plane crash in the Andes?

[frazzled]

18. Or Peruvian LANSA Flight 508, December 1971

Which Werner Herzog explored in his 2000 film Wings of Hope. (Knowing Werner, it's a mix of fact and fiction ... but. for him, the truth lies in the lies as much as the truth: that's what cinema is.)

Wings of Hope (German: Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel) is a 2000 made for TV documentary directed by Werner Herzog. The film explores the story of Juliane Koepcke, a German Peruvian woman who was the sole survivor of Peruvian flight LANSA Flight 508 following its mid-air disintegration after a lightning strike in 1971. Herzog was inspired to make this film as he narrowly avoided taking the same flight while he was location scouting for Aguirre, Wrath of God. His reservation was canceled due to a last minute change in itinerary.

In the film, Herzog and Koepcke visit the scenes of her flight, crash, and escape from the jungle. They take a flight from Lima to Pucallpa (though with a different airline), and sit in the same row of seats where Koepcke sat during the crash. They unearth many large fragments of the plane in the jungle, and then visit the river routes where she traveled for 10 days on foot, and the small village where she was eventually found by three men, one of whom appears in the film.