Touching the Void is a 2003 survival documentary film directed by Kevin Macdonald and starring Brendan Mackey, Nicholas Aaron, and Ollie Ryall.

The plot concerns Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' near-fatal descent after making the first successful ascent of the West Face of Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes, in 1985.

[2] In 1985, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, both experienced mountaineers, successfully ascended the previously unclimbed West Face of Siula Grande in Peru.

After a bivouac high on the peak, the pair continue their descent the following morning, but then Simpson falls whilst climbing down an ice cliff on the ridge and suffers a badly broken leg during an awkward landing.

The pair commence a self-rescue with Yates lowering Simpson with ropes down a steep, 3,000 ft (910 m), snow and ice slope while the weather deteriorates into a fierce storm.

The pair had almost reached the relative safety of the glacier when Yates inadvertently lowers Simpson over the edge of a large cliff, leaving him suspended on the rope in mid-air.

After surviving a sub-zero and stormy night on the mountain, Yates completed his descent to the surface of the glacier, but cannot find his partner, and concludes that Simpson must have fallen to the large crevasse at the base of the cliff.

Exhausted and delirious, Simpson reaches camp only a few hours before Yates and Richard Hawking (a non-climber who was the third member of the expedition) intend to leave and return to civilization.

[9] The BBC1's Film 2011 included Brendan Mackey's performance as Joe Simpson in their "Top Five Actors" who "Should Have Won an Oscar", along with Ingrid Bergman (for Casablanca), Anthony Perkins (for Psycho), Ralph Fiennes (for Schindler's List) and Jeff Bridges (for The Big Lebowski).