On Her Shoul­ders – first look review

Doc­u­men­taries that dis­sect con­tem­po­rary tragedies in the Mid­dle East have all but become their own sub-genre. Such are the hor­rors that con­tin­ue to impact the region – in Syr­ia (Last Men in Alep­po), Pales­tine (Five Bro­ken Cam­eras), Iraq/​Afghanistan (The Unknown Known) and oth­ers – it can seem too easy to claim war fatigue and look away.

Alexan­dria Bombach’s fly-on-the-wall account of Nadia Murad’s defi­ant mis­sion to seek jus­tice from the UN cer­tain­ly makes for con­fronting view­ing. Her vil­lage in North­ern Iraq was tak­en over by ISIS, who exe­cut­ed all the men and took the women and girls as sex slaves – leav­ing thou­sands wid­owed, orphaned and irre­versibly trau­ma­tised. The rest of the world appeared to do nothing.

Enter Murad, a 23-year-old vil­lager who once had dreams of open­ing her own salon. She meets with world lead­ers, endures a media fren­zy com­plete with abhor­rent ques­tion­ing and address­es her peo­ple as their reluc­tant leader, in a dras­ti­cal­ly altered land­scape where the future of their land hangs in the bal­ance. With the odds stacked against them – as we are told, the Yazidis make up a frac­tion of the world’s 60 mil­lion refugees – it’s almost too much to watch the despair that per­me­ates through­out Murad’s very being, threat­en­ing to unleash at any moment. A telling sequence, where Europe’s role in deter­min­ing the Yazidi’s fate appears to effec­tive­ly fin­ish what ISIS start­ed, tests even the most sto­ic of souls.

Bom­bach is intu­itive as she tracks each step of Murad’s ago­nis­ing jour­ney – only a woman direc­tor could sure­ly have direct­ed this pow­er­ful film so elo­quent­ly. With an insider’s view of Murad’s rov­ing cam­paign HQ (manned by her self­less advi­sor cum trans­la­tor Ismael), we see the fragili­ty of a sur­vivor con­fronting her fears and plough­ing on, despite her innate desire to do oth­er­wise. Reveal­ing an acci­den­tal activist in action, Bombach’s film could so eas­i­ly have been called The Reluc­tant Hero – although to do so would define Mur­rad as a vic­tim, some­thing she vows nev­er to be.

Hope comes in the form of Amal Clooney, who takes up Murad’s case in demand­ing the UN tries ISIS for their geno­ci­dal crimes. Amidst all the polite smil­ing Murad musters for lead­ers and dig­ni­taries in Cana­da, Ger­many, Greece and the US, a cru­cial speech in front of the UN offers just a few min­utes for her to present her case. This is the moment that could define her people’s fate, as she push­es for ISIS to be tried for war crimes.

Bom­bach shoots (and edits) much of the film, and is aid­ed by a vis­cer­al score from Patrick Jon­s­son (The White Hel­mets) which will leave you in pieces. The fate of the Yazidis is far from cer­tain, of course – a fact the film open­ly acknowl­edges – and even Murad must accept the need for secu­ri­ty, hav­ing received death threats of retal­i­a­tion for her cam­paign­ing. There can be no hap­py end­ing, but one is left with a sense that just maybe, a solu­tion can be found. A heart­break­ing and pow­er­ful film made all the more so in light of the #MeToo move­ment and recent women’s marches.