ON HER SHOULDERS, Alexandria Bombach's Sundance Documentary Directing Prize Winner, Opens Todayth
ON HER SHOULDERS is Alexandria Bombach's deeply moving portrait of Yazidi genocide survivor-turned-global advocate Nadia Murad. Winner of the Sundance Film Festival's U.S. Documentary Directing Award, the film was also featured at the SXSW Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and as the opening night film of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. It will open on Friday, October 19 at New York's Village East Cinemas, followed by Los Angeles on October 24, and a national rollout to follow.
Twenty-three-year-old Nadia Murad's life is a dizzying array of important undertakings-from giving testimony before the U.N. to visiting refugee camps to soul-bearing media interviews and one-on-one meetings with top government officials. With deep compassion and a formal precision and elegance that matches Nadia's calm and steely demeanor, director Alexandria Bombach (who also shot and edited the film) follows this strong-willed young woman, who survived the 2014 genocide of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq and escaped sexual slavery at the hands of ISIS to become a RELENTLESS beacon of hope for her people, even when at times she longs to lay aside this monumental burden and simply have an ordinary life.
