On Her Shoulders

With deep compassion and an elegance that matches her calm and steely demeanor, 23 year-old Nadia Murad survives the 2014 genocide of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq and escapes ISIS to become a relentless beacon of hope for her people. In 2018, Nadia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; she is the first Iraqi and Yazidi to be awarded a Nobel prize.

Filmmaker bio: Alexandria Bombach is an award-winning cinematographer, editor, and director from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her first feature-length documentary, Frame By Frame, follows the lives of four Afghan photojournalists who are facing the realities of building Afghanistan’s first free press. The film had its world premiere at SXSW 2015, went on to win more than twenty-five film festival awards and screened in front of the president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani. Alexandria continued her work in Afghanistan in 2016, directing the Pulitzer Center-supported New York Times Op-Doc, Afghanistan by Choice, an intertwining portrait of five Afghans who must weigh the costs of leaving or staying as the country’s security deteriorates. In addition to her feature documentary work, Alexandria’s production company Red Reel has been producing award-winning, character-driven stories since 2009. Her 2013 film, Common Ground, unearths the emotion behind a proposed wilderness-area addition for a community in Montana as heritage. Her Emmy award-winning 2012 series MoveShake captured the internal conflicts of people dedicating their lives to a cause.