Pakistan has sent thirteen films into the Oscars' international feature race since 1959. Not one has landed a nomination.
This year the country is trying something it has never tried before. The Pakistan Academy Selection Committee has chosen Hanging by a Wire, a documentary thriller directed by Mohammed Ali Naqvi, as its submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards. The film is directed by Naqvi and written and produced by Naqvi and Bilal Sami.
It marks the first time a nonfiction film has represented Pakistan in the category.
The story at its center is one Pakistanis already know. The film revisits the August 2023 cable car emergency in Battagram, in northern Pakistan, in which eight passengers, including six schoolboys on their way to school, were left suspended roughly 900 feet above a ravine after a cable snapped. The resulting rescue effort was followed live across Pakistan and internationally.
Naqvi builds the account from the ground up rather than reconstructing it from a distance. The film draws on footage from witnesses, testimony from survivors, and staged reenactments involving people who took part in the rescue to build its account.
He described the project's unusual source material in his own words. "I'm honored that Hanging by a Wire has been selected to represent Pakistan in the International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards, and grateful to the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee," Naqvi told Deadline. "It's a straight-up disaster film, except it really happened, and you're watching real footage of it unfolding live. The community on the ground filmed it themselves and trusted me with that footage, so in a real sense they co-authored this film with me."
That footage came out of necessity, not convenience. There are no "proper roads" in the area where the incident took place, Naqvi explained in a Meet the Filmmaker video posted by Sundance. "The way people get around in the mountains is by using makeshift cable cars."
The film has already made its way around the festival circuit.
Hanging by a Wire debuted at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, in the World Cinema Documentary Competition lineup, before going on to play the Tribeca Festival. It lists the 77-minute production as being from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Pakistan.
Backing for the project came from multiple sides of the industry. The film is produced by EverWonder Studio, Universal Pictures Content Group, Mindhouse Productions and 64th Street Media. Dogwoof holds theatrical distribution rights in the U.K., with Abramorama handling U.S. theatrical release. The film is set for a streaming release on Paramount+ on Oct. 28.
The selection committee framed the choice as more than a procedural pick. Sana Zahra Jafri, deputy chairperson of the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee, said, "The selection marks a historic milestone for Pakistani documentary filmmaking and brings an extraordinary story from northern Pakistan to the International Feature Film Oscar race."
Pakistan's record in this category has been thin for decades. Pakistan has submitted 13 films in the category since 1959 without a nomination, with Saim Sadiq's Joyland marking its only shortlist appearance in 2022. That near miss still stands as the country's closest brush with a nomination.
Reviews out of the festival run have been split. The Hollywood Reporter's critique carried the headline "Jaw-Dropping Footage Undermined by Generic Documentary Storytelling." It's the kind of notice that praises the material while questioning the shape built around it. Fair or not, it signals the film will have to clear more than a sentimental bar with Academy voters.
None of that changes what the selection itself represents. A true-crime-adjacent rescue story, told largely through the footage of the people who lived it, is now Pakistan's official face in the race.
Whether it reaches the shortlist will depend on voters who tend to favor fiction in this category. But the submission already marks a shift in how the country's Oscar committee is willing to bet. With the film streaming on Paramount+ later this month and the Academy's shortlist announcement still weeks away, Hanging by a Wire now carries a weight well beyond Battagram.
Check topics and authors from this story to see more stories like this in your personalized feed and receive updates when new work is published.
