Kevin Macdonald (October 28, 1967) is a Scottish documentary film director, best known for Touching the Void (2003).

Macdonald was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the grandson of the Hungarian-born English filmmaker Emeric Pressburger. He began his career with a biography of his grandfather, The Life and Death of a Screenwriter (1994), which he turned into the documentary The Making of an Englishman (1995).

After making a series of biographical documentaries, Macdonald directed One Day in September (2000), about the killing of Israeli atheletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary.

His next film was Touching the Void, which told the story of two climbers' disastrous attempt to scale the Siula Grande in the Andes in 1985. The film won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2004 BAFTA Awards – ironic, as it was Korda who had given Macdonald's grandfather his first job when he had arrived in England in 1935.

In 1999 he married Tatiana Lund.

Filmography

As director:

• The Making of an Englishman (1995)
• Chaplin's Goliath (1996), a film about the actor Eric Campbell.
• The Moving World of George Rickey (1997)
• Howard Hawks: American Artist (1997)
• Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance (1998, also producer), about the film director Donald Cammell .
• One Day in September (2000)
• Humphrey Jennings (2000)
• A Brief History of Errol Morris (2000)
• Being Mick (2001). A fly-on-the-wall documentary following Mick Jagger.
• Touching the Void (2003).

External links

• An interview with Macdonald on the making of Touching the Void.