MAN ON WIRE
starts Wednesday August 27
"Exhilarating" –New York Times
"One of the most wildly entertaining docs in years … astonishes in every respect." –Variety
(Winner, Grand Jury Prize/Audience Award, 2008 Sundance Film Festival)
For the serious-minded, acrobatics might seem a frivolous pursuit. But raise the stakes to 1300 feet above New York City's cold, hard pavement and circus stunts become a matter of life—as in the kind that's lived to its fullest—and death. The French acrobat Philippe Petit thrilled the world when, after months of spying and planning, he snuck to the top of the World Trade Center, strung a high wire from the corner of one of the Twin Towers to the other, and then performed the world's greatest high wire walk. In revisiting Petit's story, director James Marsh has constructed a gorgeous, innovative, nail-biting and operatic celebration to the freest of free spirits, a hero who can't help but arouse our own sense of wonder and adventure. (U.K., 2008, 102m)