Pakistan's Oscar entry: "Hanging by a Wire" is the country's first documentary picked for the International Feature race

Key takeaways

• Pakistan's Academy Selection Committee has chosen "Hanging by a Wire", directed by Mohammed Ali "Mo" Naqvi, as its official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards (2027).
• It is the first documentary Pakistan has ever selected for the category.
• The film revisits the August 2023 cable-car emergency in Battagram, northern Pakistan, when eight people, including six schoolboys, were stranded about 900 feet above a ravine.
• Being Pakistan's submission is not a nomination: the Academy still has to shortlist and nominate from entries worldwide.
• Dawn's Images section reports that Pakistan has sent 13 films since 1959 without a nomination; the closest was Saim Sadiq's "Joyland", which made the 2022 shortlist.

What the film is about

Variety and Deadline describe "Hanging by a Wire" as a documentary thriller written and produced by Naqvi and Bilal Sami. It combines eyewitness footage, survivor testimony and staged reconstructions featuring people who took part in the rescue. The rescue was followed live across Pakistan and internationally. Naqvi told Deadline it is "a straight-up disaster film, except it really happened", and that the community filmed much of the footage themselves and trusted him with it.

How it was chosen

The announcement came from Sana Zahra Jafri, deputy chairperson of the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee, who called the selection a historic milestone for Pakistani documentary filmmaking. Dawn Images lists this year's committee as actors Marina Khan and Hina Khawaja Bayat, artist Misha Japanwala, directors Nabeel Qureshi and Shahzad Rafique, producer Badar Ikram and actor-influencer Tamkenat Mansoor. Jafri said the Academy requires the panel to be independent, represent film artists and craftspeople and be free of conflicts of interest, and that the committee received a wide range of films this year.

What to watch

• The Academy's official list of international submissions and its later shortlist stage; dates are set by the Academy and were not confirmed in the sources used here.
• Release plans and screenings in Pakistan and abroad as the awards campaign begins.
• How the film performs in other awards-season events, which often shape shortlist chances.