On Her Shoulders
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“What is Our Responsibility to Survivors?”: Alexandria Bombach on her Sundance-Winner On Her Shoulders
Recently announced Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nadia Murad, a survivor of the Yazidi genocide and a current human rights activist, is the star of On Her Shoulders, Alexandria Bombach’s Sundance-winning (both for Best Documentary and the U.S. Documentary Directing Award) portrait of Murad as she navigates a world that would be overwhelming and intimidating for any 23-year-old, let alone one who has experienced unspeakable crimes at the hands of ISIS. But speak Murad must — to the prying media, to the cold bureaucratic UN, to indistinguishable assorted government officials. And to the refugees at camps who look to her as […]
by Lauren Wissot on Oct 17, 2018 -
“The Rest of the Shoot Was Just as Unpredictable”: Director Alexandria Bombach | On Her Shoulders
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your work? When I packed my bags to meet Nadia Murad for the first time, I thought we were heading to Kurdistan. I was going to film the displaced Yazidis in camps north of Sinjar and possibly the mass graves where ISIS had murdered thousands of Yazidi people in 2014. It was July, so I packed for 120-degree […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2018 -
“The Big Cameras Get Stopped in Security”: Alexandria Bombach on Shooting and Directing On Her Shoulders
Documentary filmmaker Alexandria Bombach released her debut feature, Frame by Frame, in 2015 to major acclaim on the festival circuit. The film screened at more than 30 festivals, including SWSX, Hot Docs, AFI Docs and the Camden International Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Documentary Feature. Bombach debuts her second feature, On Her Shoulders, in the U.S. Documentary Competition lineup at Sundance 2018. Below she discusses acting as her own cinematographer, the influence of Errol Morris’ Interrotron and filming in the “impossible heat” of a refugee camp in Athens. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2018
