Pakistan sends the Battagram cable-car documentary to the Oscars

Pakistan's academy selection committee has chosen Mohammed Ali Naqvi's documentary Hanging by a Wire as the country's entry for Best International Feature at the 99th Academy Awards. Dawn reported the decision on 3 October. It is the first time Pakistan has sent a documentary into that category.

The film returns to the Battagram cable-car emergency of August 2023. Eight people, six of them children, were stuck in a local cable car about 900 feet above the Jhangri River in northern Pakistan. The car was the only crossing for children in that stretch. There was no road bridge. An early helicopter lift got two of the children off. Rescuers then slid along a remaining cable to the stranded car and brought the others back one by one, late into the night.

Naqvi directed the film and wrote and produced it with Bilal Sami. The production is a Pakistan, United States and United Kingdom partnership. EverWonder Studio, Universal Pictures Content Group, Mindhouse Productions and 64th Street Media are the producing companies named by Deadline. Dogwoof handles theatrical distribution in Britain. Abramorama handles it in the United States. A Paramount+ streaming release is set for later this month. The film opens Sundance on its festival card and has also played Sydney, Seattle and Tribeca in New York. Next Friday it plays the 23rd Bend Film Festival in Oregon.

Pakistan first submitted a film to the international category in 1959. Across 13 previous entries it has never taken a nomination. The closest result was in 2022, when Saim Sadiq's Joyland reached the shortlist. That is the benchmark this submission is being measured against, not a win. A shortlist place would already be only the second time the country has gone that far.

In a July press note, Naqvi said the film was a statement about what Pakistani cinema can be. A story from the mountains, told by people from there, could be a full action thriller, open Sundance, play large festivals, and sit with a Hollywood studio behind it. He said Pakistan's stories did not have to be small or solemn to matter, and that he hoped the film would open doors for others. He told Deadline he was honoured by the selection and grateful to the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee.

The Oscar rule that matters here is the one that lets a documentary compete as an international feature if the country submits it and the film meets the language and theatrical tests. Pakistan is using that route. The film is not being entered only in the documentary category by the national committee. The committee's job is the international feature slot. One film per country. The choice of a nonfiction title over a scripted feature is the break with the previous 13 submissions.

The Battagram rescue was already a global news story in 2023. The film's claim is that the same event can carry a theatrical cut, with the suspense of a rescue told from the ground rather than from a news desk. That is a different product from the footage that ran on television during the night of the rescue. Naqvi's July line about a Hollywood studio is specific: Universal Pictures Content Group is in the producing group. That is not the same as a Universal wide release, and the theatrical path named so far is Dogwoof and Abramorama, specialist distributors, not a studio multiplex slate.

The selection does not guarantee a shortlist place. The Academy's international feature branch still has to screen the entry against every other national submission. Joyland's shortlist in 2022 remains the only time a Pakistani film has cleared that stage. Hanging by a Wire arrives with a festival trail that Joyland also had, and with a subject that viewers outside Pakistan already recognise from the 2023 rescue. Whether that recognition helps or makes the film look like a recut of a news event is the question the branch will answer. The committee in Karachi has made its choice. The next date that matters is the Academy's shortlist announcement, not another domestic vote.