Survivors - True Stories

On this particular day, Salt Lake City's emergency services call on Sergeant Mitch Vetere. Accustomed to rescuing lost hikers, he goes to the scene they tell him of without any anxiety. In his 35 years of service however, he has never experienced this...

It's September 2nd 2021. A family reports the disappearance of their little boy, Anthony, in the community of Putty, in New South Wales, Australia. Quickly, law enforcement sets up a strategy to find this little tot, but it's not going to be easy. There are 3 major problems. He is only 3 years old, he suffers from autism, and above all, Anthony is alone in the bush, an infertile desert known to be deadly...

Obeying the orders of a superior in the army? Yes! But for how long? This is the question that Hiroo Onoda, born in Kamekawa, Japan, on March 19th 1922, should have asked himself. Growing up with his six brothers and sisters, he began working at the age of17 at the Tajima-Yoko Nail Polish Import and Export Company. At the age of 20, when he was called up for military service, his fate changed. Assigned to the 218th infantry regiment in Nanchang, he underwent several months of intensive training to become a real warrior... And he was very obedient !

You can be a hero at any age, at least that is what Saroo Brierley, whose real name is Sheru Munshi Khan, teaches us through his story. Born into a very poor family in Khandwa, India, to a father who forced his mother to work in public works and his children to beg in railway stations, and then abandoned the family. One night in 1986, in order to feed their mother and siblings, Saroo and his brother Guddu, after a day of begging at their city’s train station, hop on a train, and then transfer to a second train towards another destination. Saroo falls asleep...

On June 29th 2009, Bahia Bakari, 12 years old, gets on a plane for the first time in her life. Accompanied by her mother, she takes off from Paris to go to the Comoros. Unfortunately, the Airbus A310-300 of the company Yemenia Airways will never land... The crash takes place near Grande Comore, in the Indian Ocean, and 152 people lose their lives.

The doctor and biologist Alain Bombard, 30 years old, decides to prove 2 things to the world. Firstly, that a human being can live at sea, on a lifeboat without food, without water, with only a tent, a sextant, a fishing line, a net and a knife. According to him, mental strength is what makes you survive! Secondly, that a lifeboat can be seaworthy. A year earlier, to confirm his theories, he decided to coat his body with fat to withstand the cold and swim across the English Channel. And he succeeded! He feels ready for the great adventure.

The place is Sweden. A few miles from the town of Umeå, close to the Arctic Circle. This municipality is the twelfth largest city in the region and is also known as the capital of Norrland. Two men are riding along on their snowmobile. The temperature outside is -20°F; the men spot, on the forest road in the distance, the roof of a car covered with a thick layer of white powder. They stop and begin clearing the snow, until they discover a man lying on the back seat of the vehicle, in a sleeping bag...

Jack Churchill graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, England, in 1926. He left the army in 1936 to become an editor for a daily newspaper in Kenya. Then he branched off into modelling, and even film acting. Indeed, his mastery of medieval weaponry, especially the sword and the bow-and-arrow, landed him roles in 2 movies: Jack Conway’s 1938 comedy “A Yank at Oxford”, and the 1940 adventure film "The Thief of Baghdad".

Some people believe everything that happens in the world has been written in advance. If that’s true, then this titanic story hasn’t finished making the rounds! It all began in Southampton on April 10, 1912. Edmond and Michel, natives of Nice in the south of France, were only 2 and 3 years old when they boarded the TITANIC with their father. Their parents were in the process of divorce, and as the cause was adultery, the separation was ugly. Unable to bear the fact that the custody of his sons was going to be entrusted to his future ex-wife, Michel Navratil, decided to take advantage of the Easter vacations to flee to America – more precisely to Chicago – and take his boys with him.

In 2013, Nigerian Harrison Okene was working as a cook on a tugboat: along with other vessels, his boat was working to help a supertanker 30km off the coast of Nigeria. The only problem was a storm. In the early morning of a new day of manoeuvering, a gigantic wave capsized the boat he was on and broke the cable that was holding it to the supertanker.