As soon as Nadia Murad became the public face of the Yazidi genocide in northern Iraq, the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner seemed destined to become the subject of an inspirational human-interest documentary. Fortunately, in the capable hands of director Alexandria Bombach, the 23-year-old’s horrifying tale of losing most of her family and fellow villagers only to then spend months as a sex slave for ISIS isn’t compressed into a familiar, pre-packaged narrative of redemption or resilience.
On Her Shoulders frames Murad’s quest for justice through the lens of her newfound fame, giving a palpable sense of the deep emotional toll this sudden and immense pressure takes on her. In the documentary’s early segments, Bombach cuts together a series of television interviews that see Murad telling and retelling her story to virtually any reporter who would listen. Her only goal is to force political action from world leaders and obtain aid for the still-suffering Yazidi people, yet time and again she’s met with well-intentioned but ultimately useless outpourings of sympathy for her own misfortunes and her bravery in facing them head on.
Bombach smartly realizes that it isn’t only Murad’s bravery that makes her extraordinary, but her willingness to repeatedly take on the Sisyphusian task of dredging up the horrors of her past only to see most people she talks to almost entirely miss the point of her doing so. Her tenacity in putting herself through the ringer for the benefit of her fellow Yazidis is evident from the onset, though as Murad continues to grapple with the glacial pace with which the international community rallies for true change, the film captures how exhausting and infuriating it can be to tilt the odds toward justice.
Only a few years prior, Murad wanted to open a hair salon, and here she is thrust onto the world stage, carrying the weight of her entire culture as it teeters on the verge of extinction. At its most cutting and intimate, On Her Shoulders captures Murad’s public and private sides colliding in numerous moments where she politely smiles to various world leaders and journalists, only temporarily concealing the pain, sadness, and frustration before those emotions inevitably work their way to the surface. Bombach may linger throughout on Murad’s bravery, but the filmmaker is interested more on homing in on the ways her subject’s fragility and self-doubt arise as collateral damage from her fame and steadfast activism.
Murad often discusses her frustrations at having journalists and politicians ask her the wrong questions, focusing on the details of what was done to her rather than what can be done to help her fellow victims. This tendency to fawn over Murad rather than react to her pleas for action leads to numerous awkward moments. While one politician all but pushes her into taking a tour of the Canadian House of Commons only to callously turn it into a photo op, another repeatedly mentions that her mother loves Murad and thinks of her as a daughter. Murad politely smiles throughout such encounters, though the discomfort she feels at being turned into an object of pity rather than an impetus for change is evident the second her smile fades.
Ironically, Murad’s desire to not “be known as a victim” is fulfilled only during sequences later in the film where she meets with various groups of refugees in Europe. These scenes are rife with both impassioned speeches and cries of agony and sorrow, but this shared trauma provides Murad with a sense of camaraderie and belonging that has been missing since she fled her village.
It’s here, as well as in scenes where she discusses with fellow Yazidis how best to preserve their culture, that Bombach offers a fascinating peek at Murad in her own element, revealing just how huge her culture shock was in her rapid transition from rural farm girl to internationally recognized figure fighting for human rights. On Her Shoulders ends on a high note, with Murad speaking before the United Nations General Assembly and being appointed the organization’s first ambassador for survivors of human trafficking, but more importantly, it highlights the monumental amount of patience, effort, and resolve it takes to get the world to even notice a genocide of 500,000 people.
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