Pakistan Picks Doc Thriller 'Hanging By A Wire' for Oscars — SkimNews
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- Pakistan selected Mo Naqvi's documentary 'Hanging By a Wire' as its official entry for Best International Film at the 99th Academy Awards, the first time the country has submitted a documentary for the category.
- The film reconstructs the August 2023 cable car emergency in Battagram, Northern Pakistan, where six schoolchildren and two adults were stranded roughly 900 feet above ground after a cable snapped, with the rescue captured via eyewitness footage and survivor testimony.
- Director Mo Naqvi, who co-wrote and co-produced with Bilal Sami, frames the documentary around an ad hoc rescue team including cable car repairman Sahib Khan (a local 'sky pirate'), zipline-equipped Ali Swati, and district police chief Sonia Shamroz, who oversaw the operation.
- 'Hanging By a Wire' premiered in Sundance's World Cinema Documentary competition and has since screened at Tribeca, the Seattle International Film Festival, and the Sydney Film Festival, with a Paramount+ streaming release slated for later this month.
- Production companies EverWonder Studio, Universal Pictures Content Group, Mindhouse Productions, and 64th Street Media produced the film, with Dogwoof handling U.K. distribution and Abramorama handling U.S. theatrical distribution.
- Sana Zahra Jafri, deputy chairperson of the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee, called the choice 'a historic milestone for Pakistani documentary filmmaking' for bringing the story to the Oscar race.
Why it matters: Pakistan's submission breaks new ground: for the first time, the country's Oscar entry is a documentary, and one built from raw footage shot by the very community at the center of a near-catastrophe. With Paramount+ distribution lined up, Naqvi's film gives Pakistani non-fiction filmmaking a global platform at the same time it spotlights a mountain rescue that relied on makeshift cable cars because, as Naqvi notes, there are no proper roads in the area.
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