One of the most harrowing tales of survival in modern mountaineering is Joe Simpson’s personal story (Touching the Void). Now, in The Beckoning Silence, Joe tells us about someone else’s extraordinary battle for survival—a story that eerily mirrors his own. He was 14 when he first read about Toni Kurz, and the epic story inspired him to become a climber. Toni’s attempt of a first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in 1936 is a tale of youthful hope and promise coming face-to-face with terror and the absolute limits of endurance. It is a narrative, ultimately, of the awful but eloquent silence that overwhelms the howl of blizzard winds, the roar of avalanches and the harsh grate of crampons against sheer rock and ice—a silence that can beckon heroic hearts to give up and let go. (UK, 2007, 73 min)
—Peter Kenworthy