Archive notice: This article was originally published on January 22, 2009. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
On August 7, 1974, a Frenchman named Philippe Petit balanced on a tightrope between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center, the two tallest towers in the world at the time. After dancing on the wire for an hour without a net or safety harness, he was arrested and placed in an underground jail.
Until that moment, no one except Petit and the accomplices with whom he had spent months preparing this illegal “coup” had known anything about it.
James Marsh’s documentary brings Petit’s incredible adventure back to life through the testimony of all the conspirators involved, who created a unique and beautiful feat that went down in history as “the artistic crime of the century.”
Following recognition from critics’ associations in Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, Austin, Texas, and Toronto, Man on Wire was also named best documentary by the New York Film Critics Online and Boston critics. The BBC and Discovery Films production was named Best Documentary at the 2008 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, received audience awards at the 2008 Edinburgh and Los Angeles film festivals, and won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
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