Hanging by a Wire - Director Mohammed Ali Naqvi

Hanging by a Wire recounts the true story of a routine school commute that turned terrifying when a makeshift cable car's wire snapped, leaving eight passengers — including six schoolboys — suspended hundreds of feet above a ravine in the remote foothills of the Pakistani Himalayas. With the clock ticking before the remaining cable was expected to fail, an unlikely band of local rescuers raced against time to bring them home safely. Drawing on firsthand testimony and remarkable on-the-ground footage, the film is a tense, true-life portrait of courage, community, and the class divides that complicated the rescue effort. Hanging by a Wire premiered on opening day of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, where it played to sold-out crowds. Abramorama will release the film in North American theaters in August 2026, with the film arriving for its streaming debut in late 2026.

About the filmmaker - Mohammed Ali (Mo) Naqvi is an award-winning director, producer, and writer, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Television Academy. His latest film, Hanging by a Wire, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. Mo produced two seasons of the Netflix Original Top 10 docu-series Turning Point and received the inaugural Emmy's Television Academy Honor for the Showtime Original Shame. His acclaimed directorial work includes the Emmy-nominated Among the Believers (PBS/Netflix), Insha'Allah Democracy (Lionsgate/STARZ/BBC), the Emmy-nominated and Asian Media Award–winning The Accused: Damned or Devoted? (BBC/PBS/ARTE), and Pakistan's Hidden Shame (Channel 4 UK), which won the Grand Jury Prize at the United Nations Association Film Festival. As a producer, his fiction credits include Big River (Berlin Film Festival), produced by legendary Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano's Office Kitano, and I Will Avenge You Iago, starring Giancarlo Esposito. Naqvi has received two Amnesty International Awards and earned nominations for an Independent Spirit Award, a Cinema Eye Honor, and the UNESCO–Fellini Prize. Beyond filmmaking, Mo is a founding member of the Crescent Collective at the Cannes Film Market and has served as Chairman of Pakistan's Academy Awards Selection Committee (2023–2025) and as the former Artistic Director of the Tasveer Film Market, part of Tasveer, North America’s only Oscar-qualifying South Asian film festival. Originally from Karachi, his work and collaborations span the US, Europe, and Japan.