On the morning of August 22, 2023, Pakistan watched eight people hang precariously from a cable-car gondola suspended hundreds of feet above a ravine in the village of Allai in northern Pakistan. The cable car had been carrying schoolchildren across a valley in Allai when two of its cables snapped.
For hours, the country waited, transfixed, as rescuers attempted to reach the stranded passengers.
The footage was extraordinary: a boy suspended by a helicopter above the valley; rescuers inching towards the cable car; a military helicopter hovering nearby; villagers watching helplessly from below. There was a sense that the entire country was holding its breath.
Filmmaker Mohammed Ali Naqvi was watching too. “I think everyone was glued to their TV that day,” he says. “It was a play-by-play unfolding on the TV.”
After two decades of making films about Pakistan, the critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker is done with the expectation that Pakistani filmmakers must explain their country to the Western gaze. With his new film, Hanging by a Wire, heading into international cinemas, he explains what brought about the change in his thinking
