Mountain climbing partners tie a line between themselves so – if one of them falls – he can be saved by the other. But what if an accident puts BOTH of them at mortal risk? What if the fallen climber can’t be pulled up? What if one climber’s fall has doomed the other? The gripping documentary Touching the Void retraces that situation in real life – what happens if you cut your partner’s line?
In 1985, this happened to expert climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates in the Peruvian Andes. The 2005 film Touching the Void re-enacts the incident with the reflections of participants.
There’s no more life-or-death decision than “Should I cut the rope?” Although the issues of betrayal and guilt naturally arise, it turns out to be lot more complicated than that.
That moment of decision is dramatic, of course, but it’s only one segment of Touching the Void, which includes multiple survival stories in one adventure. One of them is absolutely epic.
Touching the Void was directed by Kevin Macdonald, who won the Best Documentary Oscar for 2000’s One Day in September, about the terrorist attack at the 1976 Munich Olympics. Touching the Void has been acclaimed as “the most successful documentary in British cinema history”. Touching the Void can be streamed from Amazon and iTunes.