Touching the Void (film) Touching the Void (film) Touching the Void is a 2003 docudrama survival film directed by Kevin MacDonald and starring Brendan Mackey, Nicholas Aaron, and Ollie Ryall. The plot concerns Joe Simpson's and Simon Yates's disastrous and near-fatal climb of Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. It is based on Simpson's 1988 book of the same name. Critically acclaimed, "Touching the Void" was listed in PBS's "100 'Greatest' Documentaries of All Time". "The Guardian" described it as "the most successful documentary in British cinema history". In 1985, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, both experienced mountaineers,
Touching the Void (book) that there was another way out. After lowering himself, Simpson found another small entrance and climbed back onto the glacier via a steep snow slope. From there, Simpson spent three days without food and with almost no water, crawling and hopping five miles back to their base camp. This involved navigating the glacier (which was scattered with more crevasses) and the moraines below. Exhausted and almost completely delirious, he reached base camp only a few hours before Yates intended to leave the base camp and return to civilization. Simpson's survival is widely regarded by mountaineers as amongst the most amazing