Pakistan Sends Cable-Car Rescue Documentary to the Oscars
Pakistan has picked Mo Naqvi's Hanging By a Wire as its official entry for best international film at the 99th Academy Awards, Deadline reported on 2 October 2026. It is the first documentary the country has ever submitted in the category. The prize honours feature-length films produced outside the United States, with each country invited to propose one title.
The film revisits the cable-car emergency of August 2023 in Battagram, northern Pakistan. A cable snapped and left the car hanging in mid-air. Inside were six schoolchildren and two adults, suspended 900 feet above the ground.
Naqvi directed the documentary. He wrote and produced it with Bilal Sami, sharing storytelling and organisational duties. The credited production companies are EverWonder Studio, Universal Pictures Content Group, Mindhouse Productions and 64th Street Media. That credit block names the businesses that financed the film and organised the shoot.
It premiered in the World Cinema Documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2026. The section is reserved for non-fiction features made outside the United States. For film-makers, it is a public launch. For buyers, it is a shop window, where distributors decide what may reach wider release.
What makes this stand out is the form of the selection. It is non-fiction, built around a recent real event rather than a script performed by actors. The international category is open to different styles of film-making. Pakistan has chosen to lead with lived experience.
Documentary here means factual storytelling centred on real people. International means production outside Hollywood, often in a language other than English. Together, those two labels place a local emergency inside a global cinema frame.
An official entry is not yet a nomination. The Academy checks submissions from around the world for eligibility before voting begins. Only a small group advances to a shortlist and then to the final nominees. Pakistan's choice now rests with those voters.
