[rating=10.00]
As far as faceless boogeymen on the news go, you can’t get much scarier than ISIS. Their decentralized structure feels almost tailor made to terrify Americans, and the media and government certainly uses that to their advantages. Faced with our own nameless terror, it’s easy to forget that, half a world away, the dangers of ISIS are far from abstract. They’re as real as it can get.
Nadia Murad knows this as well as anyone in Iraq. In 2014, at the age of 19, Murad, a Yazidi from Northern Iraq, was kidnapped by ISIS and turned into a sex slave. This, after watching hundreds of her fellow villagers, including brothers and step-brothers, murdered by ISIS fighters. Hers was a hell we can’t even imagine; an unendurable nightmare that never ends.
Murad’s story is far from unique for women in Iraq. ISIS roved the region like packs of demons, raining their Hell upon anyone who dared to stand in their way, or had the audacity to believe something different than they do. What is unique about Murad, and what On Her Shoulders chronicles, is what she did after.
Filmmaker Alexandria Bombach (Frame By Frame) tells us Murad’s story, a story so similar to so many, and her remarkable accomplishments following her escape in this harrowing and heartbreaking new documentary. Centered around the build up to Murad’s address of the UN general assembly, On Her Shoulders is a haunting look at the horrors of ISIS, the tragedy of the refugee crisis, and the inspirational tenacity of the human spirit.
Since escaping from slavery, Murad has become the face of both the refugee crisis and sex trafficking. From her unfathomable reservoir of anguish, she has cultivated a towering mountain of strength. Hers is a story as inspiring as it is tragic, and hers is a fight that needs to be had.
Bombach captures this dichotomy brilliantly in her documentary, though to see it in action you needn’t look much farther than Murad herself. On Her Shoulders spends a good amount of time following Murad from interview to interview, and we watch as she tells her story over and over again, reliving her Hell so that people know and understand the depths of the tragedy. In a sense, she has become an emotional martyr, using her voice to give voice to countless women (and men) who have no voice, or who will never have a voice again.
Much of the film finds Murad looking directly into the camera, telling her story and putting an unforgettable face on the tragedy of ISIS. In her eyes pain, yes, but behind that is a kind of fearlessness that most of us will never know. If ISIS is an army of demons, Murad is nothing less than an angel of God. She is an emissary of righteousness, a messenger of will.
One poignant scene finds Murad visiting the Scaramagas refugee camp in Athens. There she meets a young boy who, like so many throughout history, tries to put his pain into words with the power of music. She listens as he sings a song he has written, her face breaking a little more with every passing line. “Were we your enemies?” he sings. “You’ve taken our mothers/We’ve all been taken captive/you made us orphans/Thousands of our elders died in the mountains/We could not bury them.”
At that, both she and the young musician breakdown, sobbing at the emotional enormity of it all, overwhelmed by the tragedy and senselessness. Their despair is part of the legacy—our legacy, really—of the Iraq war, and of war in general. Look upon your works, ye mighty, and despair.
By giving us this unflinching and emotional view of Murad, Bombach allows us an equally unflinching and emotional view of the refugee crisis, which continues to this day. We’re taken deep inside the issue, and left with the undeniable truth that we must do something. This is a tragedy that cannot be ignored away, that cannot be denied.
Murad’s hell might be over, but her struggle continues to this day. As the world watches, debating over what to do, or even if there’s anything that can be done, people suffer still. On Her Shoulders makes it impossible to bury your head any longer. It is as stunning and emotional a documentary as I have ever seen.
