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,
Fire on the Mountain (book) Smokejumpers, Roger Roth and James Thrash, and two members of a Helitack crew, Richard Tyler and Rob Browning. "Fire on the Mountain," won the Mountain and Plains Booksellers award as the best non-fiction book of 1999. It was made into an eponymous two-hour documentary by the History Channel that was a finalist for an Emmy award and won the Cine Master's Award as the best documentary of 1999. John N. Maclean's father Norman Maclean wrote "Young Men and Fire" that told a very similar story about the Mann Gulch Fire of August 1949 and the 13 men who died there.