Seat 26D

In the early morning of December 27, 1991, 13-year-old Sandro boarded a plane from Stockholm to Japan. His mother was an employee of Scandinavian Airlines, so they were no strangers to air travel. Just after takeoff, at an altitude of 3,000 feet, the passengers heard loud explosions on either side of the plane. The engines stalled, it all became quiet, and a few minutes later the pilot made an emergency landing in a snowy field. The plane broke apart in two different places and lay on the white ground like a wounded bird, but all 129 passengers survived the crash. This short film reconstructs these unbelievably intense minutes from the life of the boy, who is now a grown man. In tight, somewhat alienating images that make use of slow motion as well as archive footage taken after the crash from the air, the fateful flight is staged from check-in to crash landing. In voice-over, Sandro talks about how he was looking forward to the vacation, what happened in those few minutes and the effect the experience has had on him.