KARACHI, Pakistan — After years of economic doldrums and creative drought, Pakistani movies are pulling in crowds at home and garnering awards at international film festivals. It’s a miraculous restart for an industry that has seen more highs and lows than a three-hour Bollywood blockbuster. Taking the power of storytelling into their own hands, Pakistani filmmakers are fashioning much-needed, nuanced portraits of their country — and cultivating a degree of national pride that hasn’t been felt for a long time.

In 2012, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s “Saving Face,” about victims of acid attacks in Pakistan, earned the country its first Academy Award, in the best short documentary category. For local film buffs, the win was a harbinger of good things to come. In preparation for this year’s Oscars, for the first time in half a century Pakistan submitted a film for consideration in the best foreign-language film category. While the entry, “Zinda Bhaag” (“Run For Your Life”), failed to make the short list for nomination, “the very fact that we could select a movie that would represent us at the Oscars makes us proud,” says Ms. Obaid-Chinoy. The director believes that 2013 will “go down in history as the year that Pakistani cinema was reborn.”

Pakistani cinema thrived in the 1960s, with political and romantic films like “Bombay-Wallah” (1961), “Shaheed” (“Martyr,” 1962) and “Armaan” (“Desire,” 1966), featuring the screen legends Waheed Murad, Nadeem Baig and the actress Shabnam, among others. It survived the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, and went on to peak in the early 1970s with classics like “Umrao Jaan Ada” (“The Courtesan of Lucknow,” 1972) and “Aina” (“The Mirror,” 1977).

At the height of the glory days, by conservative estimates, Pakistani studios released more than 100 films a year and some 700 cinemas were operating.