Oscars: Pakistan Picks ‘Hanging by a Wire’ for Best International Feature Film Race

Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s Hanging by a Wire has been chosen as Pakistan’s entry for best international feature film at the 2027 Oscars. The documentary, the first selected by Pakistan to contend at the Oscars, revisits a dramatic August 2023 cable car emergency in Battagram in northern Pakistan. The film, which bowed at Sundance and is written and produced by Naqvi and Bilal Sami, captures in jaw-dropping detail how six schoolboys on their way to school were left suspended roughly 900 feet above a ravine after a cable snapped. That set off a rescue effort followed on live TV across Pakistan and around the world. Hanging by a Wire features eyewitness footage, survivor testimony and cinematic reconstructions that include rescue workers. “What works best in the film, as is often the case with movies such as this, is the stitching together of actual footage from the ordeal, both the fuzzy faraway phone videos and the stomach-plunging drone shots capturing these young men in staggering close-up as they sit precariously in the overturned gondola, waiting desperately for rescue,” The Hollywood Reporter film reviewer Richard Lawson writes in his review. “The stunning landscape surrounding them — verdant foothills in the foreground, snow-capped Himalayan massifs in the distance — heightens the surreality and loneliness of their experience, tiny figures suspended precariously amid the unforgiving majesty of the world,” he adds. The film is produced by EverWonder Studio, Universal Pictures Content Group, Mindhouse Productions and 64th Street Media. Dogwoof is handling a theatrical release in the U.K., Abramorama will release the film in the U.S. A Paramount+ streaming release is set for Oct. 28, 2026. THR Newsletters Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day Subscribe Sign Up