Touching the Void – 2003 | 106mins | Documentary, Drama | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Based on Joe Simpson’s international bestseller, Touching The Void documents one of the most extraordinary true stories of human endurance of our time. Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald turns the story into a finely wrought and highly compelling docudrama that combines dramatic reconstructions of the fateful climb on location juxtaposed with interviews in the company of the two men it nearly killed. Touching the Void deals with the unconquerable human spirit and examines the ties that bind two men when they join themselves by a rope and set off to challenge extreme landscapes. Beautifully filmed, this epic tale of survival takes us places most would never dare visit and poses dilemma’s we’d rather not confront.

May, 1985 – Peru. Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two ambitious young mountaineers, set off to scale the hitherto unclimbed West Face of Siula Grande, a remote and treacherous peak in the Peruvian Andes. Simpson and Yates reach the summit in three and a half days but shortly after starting to descend the north face Simpson slipped and broke his leg. Unable to walk, Yates began the arduous task of lowering Simpson down the mountain in a snowstorm: When the rope joining them together turns into a death trap, Yates is faced with a dilemma; hang on to the rope and let them both die, or cut it. Yates decides to cut it, sending Simpson crashing into the depths of a crevasse and condemning him to almost certain death. Very much alive, Simpson crawled for four days on his broken leg with no food or water back to base camp.