Touching the Void (2004)

From Oscar®-winning director Kevin MacDonald comes a riveting true story...a "gripping, white-knuckle" (The Village Voice) adventure culminating in "a cliffhanger...a real one" (Los Angeles Times)! After scaling the never-before-conquered 21,000-foot Siula Grande, mountain climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates face their greatest challenge yet: getting back down. But when Simpson shatters his leg in an awful fall and the friends are separated by a series of devastating mishaps, their individual journeys become a "voyage into an extreme experience that should not be missed" (New York Post)!
 


Editor's Note

Bringing to life Joe Simpson's book of the same name, TOUCHING THE VOID details the near-death experience he endured during a 1985 attempt to climb the only mountain in the Peruvian Andes that had not been scaled--the 21,000-foot Siula Grande. With his partner Simon Yates, Simpson successfully reached the peak after a three-day climb. During the descent, however, he fell and shattered several bones in his right leg. Yates attempted to lower Simpson down the mountain 300 feet at a time, but the process was slow and painful for both men. With no food or water, they would both surely die--which left Yates with a painful choice to make--cutting Simpson loose, thus ensuring at least his own survival. This was only the beginning of Simpson's mind-boggling odyssey.

Director Kevin McDonald (ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER) tells this compelling story by combining talking-head interviews with Simpson and Yates and stunningly photographed narrative footage--in which Simpson and Yates' ordeal is actually reenacted on Siula Grande. McDonald's reenactment footage is both engrossing and eye-popping and it could easily stand alone as its own one-of-a-kind adventure film. The interviews, however, add depth that make this a unique, thrilling, and emotional piece of cinema.