Hanging By a Wire review, cable car rescue documentary dangles viewers on the edge of disaster

The extraordinary fate of eight people trapped above a chasm in Pakistan makes for a tense, skilfully assembled survival story with unexpected flashes of comedy

S urvival documentaries are a weird little genre of nonfiction film-making that recount the stories of accidents and natural catastrophes, and more often than not, the daring rescues of people caught up in them. Eyewitnesses and the loved ones of those endangered are top of the interview list, to keep the sense of danger and emotional stakes at the top of everyone’s mind. Survivors can also have their say, and more adventurous film-makers might care to recreate the action with actors or the actual survivors themselves.

This account of how eight people, six teenage boys and two adult men, were left suspended over a chasm in northern Pakistan in 2023, when a wire on the cable car they were travelling on broke, is a pretty conventional example of the form. For obvious reasons, no one tries to recreate the situation, but since it was quite recent there is no shortage of news footage and amateur clips to fill out the particulars. The downside of doing a story that’s so recent is that some of the audience may remember what happened anyway, but still there’s plenty of nail-nibbling suspense here, and sequences that will give anyone with acrophobia the heebie jeebies, especially the drone shots that zoom close on the terrified faces of those trapped inside the dangling car.

Credit is due to director Mohammed Ali Naqvi for pulling it all together adeptly, as well as to the seamless editing by William Grayburn that nourishes the suspense and draws out some of the surprising moments of comedy. It’s good to have a bit of a giggle amid all the tension; we meet one heroic zip line enthusiast who brags about his amazing body as he struts around the gym he runs, looking buff but not outrageously so. The fact that he’s introduced halfway through the story lets us know he’ll survive, as will his best buddy, who has a lot less braggadocio.

At one point, the two of them are surprised to find a third would-be rescuer on top of the precarious cable car and they all get into an argument while the people inside hurl insults at them (correctly) for putting more strain on the already frayed cables. Indeed, the one thing the film doesn’t do, which an American or British movie would probably go big on, is investigate the safety failures that allowed all this to happen. Instead, the Pakistani interviewees just take it as bad luck that, for example, the army didn’t have any working walkie-talkies when they first showed up, just some of the kit that might have sped up the rescue effort.