“One of the festival hits was Man On Wire by James Marsh, one of 23 British-funded films in the line-up this year. Marsh's documentary is a truly extraordinary and barely believable study of a crime that harmed no one. The setting is the World Trade Centre, the year is 1974, and the perpetrator is the French street performer Philippe Petit, who set up a cable between the twin towers that would enable him to tightrope-walk between the tallest buildings on the planet, with no safety net and not even the thought of a harness.
The sheer insanity of the idea is what makes this terrific film so gripping. Petit spent 45 minutes walking back and forth between the two buildings, even lying down at one point - “dialoguing”, as he recalls it, in his charming English, “wiz a seagull”. But Man On Wire plays like a gripping heist movie, woven from recreated and real footage, so that Petit's first foot on the cable, captured in still form from snapshots taken before his inevitable arrest, is a truly heart-stopping moment.
Marsh confessed that he had had arrived with no great hopes, partly because his last two films (Wisconsin Death Trip and The King) had fallen foul of previous Sundances. His film's beautiful mix of European and American sensibilities (Marsh lives in New York) scored with the jury, critics and festival-goers. Petit put this faith into words when he, Marsh and their producer went up to collect their Audience Award. “Keep moving mountains, keep growing wings, keep dreaming,” he advised an audience of film-makers. “
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