Touching the Void

Two British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, attempted to scale the 21,000-foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. Their trek slipped from adventure into folklore after Simpson fell and broke several bones in his right leg. On their descent, Yates inadvertently lowered his companion over the edge of a crevasse during a blinding snowstorm, which left Simpson hanging over the sheer vertical face of the mountain. Yates soon faced the decision to cut the rope between them, or they would both quite possibly fall to their deaths. This harrowing, white-knuckle tale of human endurance and gut-wrenching dilemma mingles the dramatization of these events and interviews with both climbers into an unforgettable, sometimes comically deadpan nightmare under the direction of Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September).