ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is set to achieve another milestone as the documentary thriller ‘Hanging by a Wire’ has been selected as the country’s official submission in the Best International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards, becoming the first documentary to represent Pakistan in the category.
The country first submitted a film in the category in 1959 and did not receive a nomination with any of its 13 entries so far — the best Pakistan has ever done was in 2022, when Saim Sadiq’s Joyland scored a spot on the shortlist for nominations.
The nonfiction film, directed and written by Mohammed Ali Naqvi alongside producer Bilal Sami, revisits the dramatic August 2023 cable car emergency in Battagram, in which eight passengers, including seven schoolboys, were left suspended around 600 feet above a ravine after a cable snapped.
All passengers were eventually rescued, with the operation continuing late into the night. After an initial helicopter operation rescued only two children, rescuers reached the stranded cable car by sliding along one of the remaining cables and brought the remaining passengers to safety one by one.
The incident prompted a major rescue operation that was closely watched in Pakistan and internationally.
Pakistan Army personnel managed to rescue one person using a helicopter. To save the remaining seven, zipline experts Ali Swati and Sahib Khan were brought in.
After nearly 12 hours of an intense rescue operation, all eight people were eventually brought to safety.
Naqvi, a recipient of a Television Academy Honour and four-time Emmy nominee, said the film was made possible in part by footage recorded and shared by people in the affected community.
He called the film’s selection at the 99th Academy Awards “a great honour and a matter of immense pride” for him.
He told Geo tv: “Wherever we have screened the film so far — at Sundance, Tribeca, Sydney, Australia, and London, UK — audiences have received it with great enthusiasm. However, sharing this story with the people of my own country, Pakistan, is particularly meaningful and a source of great joy and pride for me. Pakistani audiences have the strongest connection with this film and understand its story most deeply.”
Naqvi himself is an industry veteran, having won an Emmy Television Academy Award in 2008 for his work on Shame.
His directorial work includes Among the Believers, Pakistan’s Hidden Shame, and The Accused: Damned or Devoted? He has also served as chair of Pakistan’s Academy Awards Selection Committee.
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