The 33: A Leadership Movie

A Movie

The 33 is a movie based on true events that happened in 2010 in a mining disaster that trapped 33 miners in San Jose Mine in Chile for 69 days.

33 Miners were working in a mine when the mine collapsed trapping them in what should have been a life sentence. 12,000 miners die yearly from mine accidents in Chile. The situation for the miners was nearly hopeless, except their families and loved ones on the outside did not give up. Massive agitations were held on their behalf forcing the government officials to really do something. Inside the mine, it was chaos, fear, anger, and uncertainty.

This is where Mario stepped. Mario, acted by Antonio Banderas was an ordinary mine worker who had his own troubles. Before the mine collapsed, he was not the mining leader. But all that changed when the disaster happened. Mario stepped up to the challenge, calmed everyone, made string speeches, took an honest assessment of the situation, and divided the available resources into days. That was the game changer. By stopping the chaos and looking at things, they could take a full birds-eye view of things! Eventually, communication with the outside world will be established and all 33 miners will be saved!

Without Mario, it is difficult to say if those miners will survive.

When the pandemic struck last year, nearly the same thing happened in my world. At first, everything was unpredictable and chaotic. I thought that the best thing to get people to act right was to constantly share scary stories with them. I was the go-to guy for all the latest information about how the pandemic was devastating a part of the world. One day, I found an article about Anne Frank and read of how she reacted during the Second World War. That did the task. I realized that more than anything, people wanted to understand that they can still organize their lives and that they can shape the future. It was true, the pandemic was happening, and thousands were dying daily and it was important to stay safe and follow all the precautions prescribed, however, more than the tragedies, we were still alive and had a life to live! The moment my thinking changed, I began to see everything differently. I began to see that this was not the first pandemic in history. Secondly, we were far more likely to survive this pandemic than all the previous ones in history. Thirdly, I was even less at risk for my age and geography. (I had families around the world, so I was worried of course and other human beings were at risk too). But calming down and looking at things allowed me to see the bigger picture, and it allowed me to see what really mattered in all of this. My messaging changed, I began to write more about mundane things. About my visit to this person or that person, about the next opportunity, I want to take, about my community, and about stories of others who had done impactful things with their lives. I was living in a pandemic, we all were, but I was no longer as destabilized as I used to be.

That’s the most important lesson I took from The 33 and Anne Frank. No matter what is going, calmness is the best response. Only in a calm situation can you take an honest assessment of the state of things and plan an escape route, or a survival route!

I loved this movie since when I watched it for the first time, but after the pandemic, I loved it even more. It is a movie I intend to watch every once in a while. I highly recommend it!

Let’s talk about it when I see you. One last piece of advice from Anne, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

Bye.

Here is a Trailer: https://youtu.be/hOoIBOYqHyw