"On Her Shoulders" — an illuminating documentary about Yazidi activist Nadia Murad

Last week, Nadia Murad was Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s guest at President Trump’s State of the Union address, the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner having been introduced to the congressman by Lincoln‘s Yazidi community.

Three years ago, the then 23-year-old Murad was in Lincoln, speaking to some of the 3,000 Yazidi refugees who have settled here, having fled an ISIS created genocide in their homeland in Iraq.

Murad’s Lincoln appearance was part of an international speaking tour that covered 20 countries. She told her story of being abducted, raped and made a sex slave by the ISIS fighters while her village was being destroyed. She lost 18 family members, including her mother, who was found in a mass grave with 80 other Yazidi women in Sinjar, Iraq.

Murad managed to escape from ISIS, made her way to Germany, where she began to tell her story, aided by Yazda, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Yazidi survivors.

“On Her Shoulders,” a documentary about Murad and her quest to create international recognition of and action about the genocide that opens Friday at the Ross Media Arts Center, follows Murad on that tour — joining her and Yazda’s director as they travel from Canada, to Germany, Greece to the U.S.

On that journey, she is repeatedly interviewed, repeatedly bombarded by the same questions — always making the plea for awareness of what has happened to others and to stop ISIS and bring the Islamic extremist group to justice.

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And she’s seen carefully crafting her speeches, dealing with government officials and, powerfully, with those who tell her that she is the only person who can carry the Yazidi cause and save the community from being scattered around the globe.

That alone is illuminating and moving. But director Alexandria Bombach puts her directly in front of the camera, revealing the fragility inside the strong-willed young woman who wanted to run a salon in her hometown, not become an activist, who struggled to deal with the pressure of the spotlight and, most of all, wants a normal life.

Bombach, who shot the film, beautifully edits the scenes together to put a touching focus on Murad without dwelling on the horrors that she endured.

The film ends with Murad becoming the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of the Survivors of Human Trafficking, her short speech to world leaders at the UN General Assembly, and her signing copies of her 2017 memoir.

It doesn’t include anything about the Nobel Peace Prize, which is fine. Nor could it possibly address what will happen to Murad and the Yazidis now that ISIS has been eliminated as a military force.

That doesn’t diminish the power and importance of “On Her Shoulders,” a film that Lincoln should embrace just as it has the Yazidis who have settled here.

In refugee camps in Greece, she’s embraced as the voice of her people, rallying them to continue to fight for themselves, their religion and culture and comforting those still traumatized by the genocide.

 

Source: https://journalstar.com/entertainment/movies/on-her-shoulders-an-illuminating-documentary-about-yazidi-activist-nadia/article_0da58718-4d48-52a1-ad87-86d1fbb4376f.html