What to Stream: Terror at 20,000 Feet in 'Touching the Void'

Touching the Void (2004) Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant

The Basics: A monumentally terrifying mountain-climbing documentary with dramatic reenactments; directed by Kevin Macdonald  
If You Liked: 127 Hours, North Face, and Deep Water
The Nugget: Disaster strikes as two climbers, bound together, descend from a snowbound 21,000-foot peak

While this is technically a mountain-climbing documentary, it’s also one of the decade’s greatest thrillers. In 1984, two British friends Joe Simpson and Simon Yates became the first (and, to this day, only) climbers to successfully scale the west face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. On the way down, things quickly went sideways: Simpson broke his leg at 20,000 feet, days from help — essentially a death sentence. Despite heroic efforts to lower him down the mountain, Yates ultimately cut his friend loose and descended alone. What follows that fateful choice is one of the most psychologically complex, emotionally harrowing, and beautifully shot survival sagas ever made. Intimate interviews alternate with climbing reenactments that play out in the horror-movie confusion of steep mountain passes and sudden whiteouts.

Photo credit: Everett Collection