TV and Film

To describe BAFTA winning Touching the Void as a mountaineering documentary would be to do this breathtaking drama an injustice. By intercutting narration from the climbers themselves with a nail-biting reconstruction of their remarkable adventure in the Peruvian Andes, the film has the best of both genres: the authentic stamp of factual storytelling and the edge-of-the-seat tension of a dramatic movie.
Extras - 'What Happened Next' tells in their own words how the team made it back home. 'Return to Suila Grande' finds both Joe and Simon back at the mountain in the summer of 2002 to advise on the filming. Emotions run high, as Simon seems unable to express his real feelings about the experience, and Joe finds himself painfully reliving the ordeal in his mind, as well as in front of the cameras.

'It is a breathtakingly beautiful film' - The Guardian

'About as close as the average viewer is ever likely to come to the actual experience of assailing a dangerous peak, it will make the crushed ice in your beverage seem unnaturally cold.' - movie-gazette.com

In The Beckoning Silence, Joe Simpson, whose amazing battle for survival featured in the multi-award winning "Touching the Void", travels to the treacherous North Face of the Eiger to tell the story of one of mountaineering’s most epic tragedies. As a child, it was this story and that of one of the climbers in particular, that first captured Simpson’s imagination and inspired him to take up mountaineering.
Toni Kurz was a brilliant young mountaineer, who along with three other climbers tried to climb the mountain in 1936, which was then the last great unconquered peak in the Alps. Their assault on the mountain started well, but then disaster struck. One by one Kurz’s colleagues were killed, leaving him alone, hanging on the end of a rope fighting for his life in the most horrific of circumstances. Over 50 years later in Peru, Kurz’s story haunted Simpson as he battled for his own survival while hanging in mid-air. His plight uncannily mirrored that of Kurz--except, against all the odds, Simpson lived whilst his hero had perished.
The Beckoning Silence tells the story of Kurz’s heroic battle for survival, but in the process it also forces Simpson to confront a fundamental question: why continue climbing when you have come so close to oblivion? In this gripping, action-packed adventure film with a difference, Simpson finally confronts his demons on the Eiger’s North Face, and rediscovers the thrill of the climb that once made him feel so alive.

'Ambitious and reflective' - The Telegraph

'A moving exploration of why men feel the need to test themselves in the most brutal and unforgiving landscapes on the planet.' - SkyTV.com