Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s documentary Hanging By A Wire is a tight, nail-biting 78 minutes detailing the haphazard rescue of 8 teenage boys stuck in a cable car.
In 2023, a passenger cable car in Pakistan snapped, 900 feet in the air, stranding eight teenage boys for nearly 24 hours. Soon, the story would spread to CNN and news around the world, as bystanders and the Pakistani government attempted to rescue these young passengers from falling to their premature deaths.
The journey to saving the boys makes for a harrowing 78 minutes in Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s documentary Hanging By A Wire. Using phone, social media, and drone footage, the film plunges you directly into the drama, with stomach-dropping images of the boys desperately holding onto their cable car together with sheer will and faith.
While more of a novelty than a transportation device in the United States, the cable car is the boys’ way of travel to school every day. Then, one snap causes the car to cling to the wire. But that’s not even the scariest part. The country’s response, or lack of a plan, demonstrates a failure to prepare for such a disaster, especially when the cable car isn’t exactly a state-of-the-art contraption. It seems like no one ever thought what would happen if the worst would happen.
What ensues would be almost comical if it weren’t true and lives weren’t on the line. The rescue plans feel like throwing spaghetti at a wall. They try a helicopter rescue, where one teen bravely hangs on to a rope and gets pulled up to safety. One man even decides to go rogue and attempts to rescue the teens himself—and he does rescue one successfully—until the authorities tell him to back off (when he’s now stuck in the cable car WITH the kids!).
This film depicts a true miracle, as no one should have survived given the circumstances. And yet strangely enough, the cable car still hangs from that wire today, in remembrance of the way the community came together to save the boys…and the way the government failed them.
Hanging By a Wire is now playing in New York.
