On Her Shoulders
A film by Alexandria Bombach
Nadia Murad, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, campaigns to free the Yazidi people after surviving genocide and sexual slavery committed by ISIS.
Nadia Murad, a 23-year-old Yazidi, survived genocide and sexual slavery committed by ISIS. Repeating her story to the world, this ordinary girl finds herself thrust onto the international stage as the voice of her people. Away from the podium, she must navigate bureaucracy, fame and people's good intentions.
Alexandria Bombach is an award-winning cinematographer, editor, and director from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her first feature-length documentary, Frame by Frame , follows the lives of four Afghan photojournalists who are facing the realities of building Afghanistan's first free press. The film had its world premiere at SXSW 2015, went on to win more than 25 film festival awards and screened in front of the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani. Alexandria continued her work in Afghanistan in 2016 directing the Pulitzer Center-supported New York Times Op-Doc, Afghanistan by Choice , an intertwining portrait of five Afghans who must weigh the costs of leaving or staying as the country's security deteriorates. In addition to her feature documentary work, Alexandria’s production company RED REEL has been producing award-winning, character-driven stories since 2009. Her 2013 film Common Ground unearths the emotion behind a proposed wilderness-area addition for a community in Montana as heritage and tradition are seemingly defended on both sides. Her Emmy award-winning 2012 series MoveShake captured the internal conflicts of people dedicating their lives to a cause.
Nadia Murad is a human rights activist. She is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, the recipient of the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize and the Sakharov Prize, and the UN’s first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. She has also received the Clinton Global Citizen Award, Peace Prize from the United Nations association of Spain, and was named 2016 Woman of the Year by Glamour Magazine. Together with Yazda, a Yazidi rights organization, Nadia is currently working to bring ISIS before the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
