Saturday April 4 MAN ON WIRE  118 mins UK 2008

Directed by James Marsh, Starring Phillipe Petit

One of the most acclaimed, talked about, exhilarating movies of last year, Man on Wire documents high wire artiste Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

Then 24, with a taste for trespassing on famous high buildings, the twin tower walk was Petit’s piece de resistance, a stunt that was years in the planning – he had dreamt of it since first reading about the towers as a boy in a dentist’s waiting room. Using archive photographs, dramatic reconstruction and interviews with Petit and his co-conspirators, the film manages to do full justice to the feat and the discipline of his support team, whose skulduggery was integral to pulling off the artistic crime of the century. A joyous account of transcendental faith and breathtaking audacity.

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