Trailer out for Hollywood version of Ossetian avenger’s story starring Schwarzenegger

“Two strangers’ lives become inextricably bound together after a devastating plane crash,” reads the annotation for the official trailer for ‘Aftermath’, a film that is based on the deadly mid-air plane collision over the Bodensee Lake in 2002 and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Hollywood drama tells the story of Vitaly Kaloyev, a man from Russia’s republic of North Ossetia whose family was killed in the German sky accident. It is set in the US, though, with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the distraught husband and father bent on taking revenge. The air traffic controller Kaloyev holds responsible for the accident is played by Scoot McNairy. The film is scheduled to be released on April 7.

• On July 1, 2002, a passenger plane of Russia’s Bashkirian Airlines carrying children to a holiday in Spain from Moscow collided with a DHL cargo jet. Everyone on board both flights died, including Kaloyev’s wife and two children. Investigators concluded later the Swiss air navigation service provider ‘Skyguide’ was to blame.

• On February 24, 2004, air traffic controller Peter Nielsen who handled traffic when the collision had occurred was killed outside his home in Switzerland. Vitaly Kaloyev was arrested on suspicion of being the killer. He told the police he had gone to see Nielsen because he wanted him to apologize for the death of his family. But, he said, as he held out photos of his children to show to Nielsen the man hit him on the hand. Kaloyev alleged he did not remember anything of what had happened after that.

• In 2005, Kaloyev was found guilty by a Swiss court and sentenced to eight years in prison.

• In November of 2007, he was paroled and went back home. He was given a hero’s welcome on his return to North Ossetia and appointed deputy minister of construction architecture of the republic in 2008.