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 (film) other hand, reported having no emotional response to returning to Siula Grande, and decided to have nothing to do with the film once he had returned from the mountain. According to the film's end notes, Yates received a great deal of criticism from the mountaineering community for cutting the rope on his partner during the descent after the story of what happened to the climbers returned to England. In reality, Simpson has deeply accepted that Yates did the right thing by cutting the rope, and risked his own life to help save Simpson's life, and has always defended him on