There are scenes in On Her Shoulders that reveal Nadia Murad’s astounding strength, and that show us the price she pays for it.
In one scene, she is among a crowd of grieving fellow Yazidis — a religious and ethnic minority group savagely targeted by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) with a genocidal campaign — and starts to cry before she’s told by a friend to hold back her tears. “They’re getting their strength from you. If you cry, they’ll cry too,” he says.
Murad swallows her tears and brushes her hair off her face. Her dark eyes, though dry, are drowning in grief.
Her story is horrific: When ISIS took over her village of Kojo in Sinjar, Iraq in 2014, the men were killed, and the women who survived were taken as slaves, raped and beaten by their captors. Murad, then 19, lost most of her family and was taken to Mosul.
She managed to escape three months later and scarcely took a free breath before starting her activism on behalf of those who were not yet free.
The word “resilience” is offensive here — Murad will never bounce back. No human would. What director Alexandria Bombach shows us instead is a portrait of staggering strength and humanity. She follows Murad as she puts her own recovery on the back burner, and pushes to get attention for what her community has suffered. Bombach captures Murad’s struggle as she quietly, repeatedly, turns herself inside out at meetings with heads of states, at the United Nations, and on endless media interviews — whatever it takes.
The questions Murad is asked are, at times insensitive, verging on prurient. Some slowed their cadence, really emphasizing the words “sssssex slaaave” rather than talking about rape as a tool of war and about what could be done to help Yazidi women.
Murad, by the way, was among two people to win a Nobel Peace Prize in September for her efforts to end the use of sexual violence in war.
Bombach spoke to ThinkProgress about the film, which she said is “definitely not a call to action for the general public” because that responsibility lies with governments.
This was a moving and difficult film to watch … What were you hoping to accomplish in choosing to tell Nadia Murad’s story?
Alexandria Bombach: As I do with most of my work, I was hoping to make people think more critically about the issues in the film and …thinking critically while there in Nadia’s world — about our own empathy or about our own apathy towards the kinds of difficult issues.
Even though she decided to take this very public role and put her own recovery aside, to raise awareness for this issue, it still seems like it was a difficult process for her. Was it difficult for you to convince her to allow you to document all of this?
AB: No, we had a very brief conversation in the beginning where I prepared very diligently for it. I explained what the process would be and Nadia had absolutely no problem with us doing the documentary but at the time they were saying ‘yes’ to absolutely everything. At the time she really wanted to get the word out and she thought if this helps, we need to do it.
Watching the film, we see journalists asking her pretty insensitive questions at times. How tempted were you to stop filming and throw a shoe at them?
AB: There were definite times of major frustration, witnessing the questions that people were asking her…. there’s a radio interview in the film and people aren’t seeing the effect that it has on her, and the reporter wasn’t in the room so she couldn’t see the effect it was having on Nadia, but to witness her is a different thing.
But I want to make something very clear: I’m also a storyteller, and the hard part about making this film is that it makes me also question everything that I do as a storyteller and my responsibility. If people are from journalism or documentary film, or any kind of storytelling, especially when we’re dealing with stories of trauma and survivors, I hope they’re thinking about what our responsibility is and why we’re asking the questions we’re asking. And that’s a big reason why this film never goes into those details, and I also want the audience to ask themselves why they even need to know.
Do you feel like the international community has responded to Nadia’s story or to the plight of the Yazidi women in any meaningful way?
AB: I think there’s different types of progress [being made] and I think that’s the frustrating thing about things like awards…I wish people were paying more attention and celebrating the things that come through with the U.N. saying that they’re going to send in a team to investigate the crimes…but the progress is never publicized as the awards, because it’s a tricky …and it’s an agonizingly slow process.
Do you feel at any point that you would go back to this story, perhaps in future projects?
AB: I would love to go back to Kurdistan [northern Iraq] and possibly make a short film about demining. Because Nadia’s work right now is about the reconstruction of Sinjar, so that the Yazidi have a homeland, and ISIS was planning mines as they were leaving…so I’d like to make a short film about that.
What would you like to see the U.S. do to help these women, and their communities, rebuild their lives and regain a sense of dignity and security?
AB: I think the U.S. needs to open its doors to refugees, and I don’t think we’re anywhere near that, given the current administration. There needs to be a lot of work done in the Sinjar area, and…we need to help women and families who are in refugee camps with no support and who are going through severe mental trauma. There are women who are in completely catatonic states because of the horrors that they have been through. They need to be expedited [and brought] here for mental health reasons, for help. But again, I don’t see that happening with this administration.
On Her Shoulders opens in New York on Friday, in Washington, D.C. on November 2, and in theaters across the country in coming weeks.