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Oscars: Pakistan Picks ‘Hanging By A Wire’ As Best Int’ Feature Entry

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Pakistan has selected Mo Naqvi’s nonfiction action thriller Hanging By a Wire as its official entry for Best International Film at the Academy Awards, the first time the country has chosen a documentary for that distinction.

The film captures the drama and suspense around a news event that captured the world’s attention in 2023: the desperate attempt to save six school kids and two adults stranded in a cable car 900 feet above the ground, in a remote area of Northern Pakistan. The kids and adults were nearly hurled out of the car after a cable snapped, leaving them, as the film’s title indicates, hanging by a wire.

“Directed by Naqvi, and written and produced by Naqvi and Bilal Sami, the film revisits the August 2023 cable car emergency in Battagram, northern Pakistan,” notes a release announcing the film’s selection for the Best International Film category. “Combining eyewitness footage, survivor testimony and cinematic reconstructions featuring participants in the rescue, Hanging by a Wire unfolds as a documentary thriller.”

(L-R) EP Aloke Devichand, producer Bilal Sami, director Mohammed Ali Naqvi, and EP Aaron Fellows attend the 'Hanging By A Wire' premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2026 in Park City, Utah.

(L-R) EP Aloke Devichand, producer Bilal Sami, director Mohammed Ali Naqvi, and EP Aaron Fellows attend the ‘Hanging By A Wire’ premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2026 in Park City, Utah.

Arturo Holmes/Getty Images

The documentary premiered in World Cinema Documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It has gone on to screen at Tribeca Festival, the Seattle International Film Festival, and the Sydney Film Festival in Australia. Next Friday, it plays at the 23rd annual Bend Film Festival in Oregon.

“I’m honored that Hanging by a Wire has been selected to represent Pakistan in the International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards, and grateful to the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee,” Naqvi tells Deadline exclusively. “It’s a straight-up disaster film, except it really happened, and you’re watching real footage of it unfolding live. The community on the ground filmed it themselves and trusted me with that footage, so in a real sense they co-authored this film with me. How resilient and resourceful they were, both in the rescue and in documenting it, is what the film is about, and there’s nothing more Pakistani than that.”

Hanging By a Wire is produced by EverWonder Studio, Universal Pictures Content Group, Mindhouse Productions and 64th Street Media. Its theatrical distribution is handled by Dogwoof in the U.K. and Abramorama in the U.S., with a Paramount+ streaming release set for later this month.

People watch as a soldier slings down from a helicopter during a rescue mission to recover students and adults stuck in a cable car in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on August 22, 2023.

People watch as a soldier slings down from a helicopter during a rescue mission to recover students and adults stuck in a cable car in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on August 22, 2023.

AFP via Getty Images

There are no “proper roads” in the area where the incident took place, Naqvi explained in a Meet the Filmmaker video posted by Sundance. “The way people get around in the mountains is by using makeshift cable cars. And it is so dangerous.” His Sundance Filmmaker video showed him on board one of the cable cars, only a crisscross metal gate separating him falling to the earth below. “During location scouting, I did this stupid thing of taking one.”

“Sky pirate” Sahib Khan in ‘Hanging By a Wire’

“Sky pirate” Sahib Khan in ‘Hanging By a Wire’

EverWonder/Mindhouse/Universal Pictures Content Group

Hanging By a Wire foregrounds an ad hoc group of locals who attempted to stage a rescue, including Sahib Khan, a cable car repairman known in his community as a “sky pirate” for his aerial exploits. Another of the rescuers, dashing Ali Swati who had access to high-quality zipline equipment, also sprang to the aid of the cable car passengers. The Pakistani official who ultimately oversaw the operation – and the likely fall person if the mission went awry — was the forceful Sonia Shamroz, “the district’s no-nonsense head of police.”

Sana Zahra Jafri, deputy chairperson of the Pakistan Academy Selection Committee, commented, “The selection marks a historic milestone for Pakistani documentary filmmaking and brings an extraordinary story from northern Pakistan to the International Feature Film Oscar race.”

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DOJ Argues CNN & Other Outlets Can Be Banned From White House

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The Justice Department argued that Donald Trump can legally ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House because he determined that they didn’t meet the “minimum requirements of professionalism.”

Last month, a federal judge granted the three outlets a temporary restraining order that forced the White House to reinstate dozens of their reporters’ hard passes. The outlets are now asking the judge to extend that 14-day order for a longer term via a preliminary injunction, claiming that Trump’s ban is a violation of their First and Fifth amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, has said that he is bound by the precedent set in In a 1977 D.C. Circuit opinion, Sherrill vs. Knight, in which the judges ruled that “the protection afforded newsgathering under the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press requires that this access not be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons.”

In a court filing on Friday, the DOJ claimed that the Sherrill case still would allow for the president to restrict the three outlets from accessing the White House grounds because the White House has a “compelling interest.”

The DOJ lawyers claimed that the Sherrill decision does not “prevent the President from concluding that bona fide journalists would identify sources instead of relying on anonymous sources, commit to factual accuracy, and provide the White House an opportunity to comment, rather than ‘perform their duties in a way that … interfere[s] with the White House’s daily operations.’ …At a bare minimum, it is a significant violation of decorum to publish classified and sensitive national security information.”

The news outlets’ legal team has rejected that assertion, writing in a filing earlier this week that Trump’s “statements also make clear he implemented the ban to coerce more favorable coverage from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, and to deter other journalists and news organizations from newsgathering and reporting that the President might view as negative. And his administration has continued to retaliate against Plaintiffs even after the temporary restraining order, only underscoring that Defendants’ motive is to punish and chill journalism they dislike.”

Even as access to the White House grounds has been reinstated, the White House has continued to restrict CNN from coverage of TV pool assignments, including travel with Trump on Air Force One.

The outlets’ lawyers, led by Theodore Boutrous Jr., also noted that Trump and other White House officials “overlooked that the First Amendment protects reporting on matters affecting national security.”

Kelly has set a hearing for Thursday on the news outlets’ motion for a preliminary injunction.

In granting a TRO, Kelly concluded that the White House failed to provide due process to the news outlets.

The DOJ has pointed to letters sent to the outlets as evidence that they were given due process. But those letters were sent on Sept. 22, four days after Trump’s ban was started.

The judge also has noted that some of the objectionable stories cited by the DOJ do not have to do with national security. Kelly wrote in his order that “even the justifications provided to Plaintiffs after this case was filed are ambiguous about the true purpose of the revocations: while Defendants’ letters to Plaintiffs mention national security concerns, they purport to identify reporting that ‘threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods’ leaving open the possibility that all the stories fall into the later bucket, rather than the former.”

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Zach Bryan Dons “Free Palestine” Shirt At Gillette Stadium Concert

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Following Robert Kraft‘s campaign against Macklemore, Zach Bryan made a statement with his performance at Gillette Stadium.

During Friday’s stop at the Kraft-owned venue for his With Heaven on Tour, the Grammy winner stepped onto the stage with a “Free Palestine” shirt after Kraft and other venue owners pressured Ed Sheeran to drop Macklemore from his tour over his outspoken support for Palestinians.

With another performance scheduled at the Massachusetts venue on Saturday night, it remains to be seen if Kraft will pull the plug.

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The show comes after Ed Sheeran was forced to cancel his Gillette Stadium shows last weekend amid a nor’easter headed for Boston, despite caving to Kraft’s demands.

Sheeran dropped Macklemore from his tour last month amid an outcry around the opener’s “Free Palestine” onstage remarks. Opting to remain publicly neutral on the issue, Sheeran subsequently released a statement saying it was the “promoter’s decision” after Kraft assembled several of the tour venues to give him an ultimatum.

Following the statement, fellow tour openers Finneas, Aaron Rowe and Lukas Graham dropped out of the tour, along with Sheeran’s backing band Beoga.

Meanwhile, Macklemore announced the Free Palestine Tour last week, which is “supporting the Palestinian people and movement,” running 10/26-10/30 in Dublin, Paris and London. He since gave an update that the tour “sold out immediately.”

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Pedro Pascal Was Surprised By Tony Gilroy’s ‘Behemoth!’

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With the world premiere of Behemoth!, Pedro Pascal is praising Tony Gilroy for the intimate drama.

During a Q&A after the film’s premiere screening at the New York Film Festival, the Golden Globe-nominated actor admitted he thought Gilroy was “gonna be kinda mean” before they worked together.

“You have created this complex Jason Bourne-like puzzle over something that is so intimate and so healing this mysterious way,” Pascal told Gilroy in a video shared by NYFF. “And I didn’t think it was gonna come from him, you know what I mean? This intimidating intellectual … you know, I thought you were gonna be kinda mean. And you thought I was gonna be a dork.

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In Behemoth!, premiering Dec. 4 in theaters, Pascal stars as cellist Alex Serian, a former child prodigy who returns home to Los Angeles to compose film scores and reconnect with his family.

Written and directed by Gilroy, the Searchlight Pictures film also stars Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, Will Arnett, Hank Azaria, Margarita Levieva and Matthew Lillard.

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