FROM SCREEN TO CONVERSATION: THE GRIPPING TRUE-STORY DOCUMENTARY “HANGING BY A WIRE”
Stories have a way of changing when you hear them directly from the people who tell them.
Yesterday, audiences at East London’s Genesis Cinema came together for a special screening of Hanging by a Wire, followed by an in-person Q&A with director Mohammed Ali Naqvi, moderated by two-time Sunday Times bestselling poet and author Hussain Manawer.
As part of our ongoing work across film, entertainment and cultural campaigns, Media House has been supporting the UK campaign for Hanging by a Wire, helping bring this extraordinary gripping true-story documentary to audiences across the country.
The documentary tells the story of eight passengers, including six schoolboys, who became trapped 900 feet above a ravine in the Himalayan foothills of northern Pakistan after a cable car wire snapped. What began as a local emergency quickly became an international story, as rescuers raced against time to bring those trapped safely back to the ground.
Directed by Mohammed Ali Naqvi, the film combines archive footage, eyewitness accounts, drone footage and carefully constructed reenactments to recreate the tension of the rescue while placing the people and community at the centre of the story. The film premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival before its UK cinema release on 28 August.
For Naqvi, making the film also meant confronting the environment at the heart of the story. Speaking about travelling on one of the makeshift cable cars himself, he described the experience simply:
“I have a marginal fear of heights. It was terrifying. You say a prayer and keep your fingers crossed.”
The experience reflects the reality faced by communities who rely on these cable cars as part of everyday life, particularly in areas where access to roads and other infrastructure remains limited. Naqvi has also highlighted the wider circumstances surrounding the rescue, saying:
“The people are isolated and ignored. They don’t have basic infrastructure. They have to improvise.”
Those wider questions were brought into focus during the Genesis Cinema Q&A, as Naqvi discussed the process of making the documentary and translating an event that unfolded live across television and social media into a cinematic experience.
Moderated by Hussain Manawer, the conversation gave audiences the opportunity to hear directly from the filmmaker about the story behind the film, the realities of making a documentary around such a recent event and the people whose actions ultimately made the rescue possible.
The evening also highlighted the importance of bringing Pakistani stories to wider audiences, while creating space for conversations around community, resilience and the realities behind extraordinary events.
For Media House, supporting Hanging by a Wire forms part of our wider work across film, entertainment, culture and audience engagement, connecting distinctive stories with audiences across the UK.
From the original rescue in northern Pakistan to the conversation in at London, Hanging by a Wire demonstrates the ability of documentary filmmaking to take a moment that captured global attention and give audiences a deeper understanding of the people and communities behind it. In UK cinemas now, watch the trailer here.
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