April 11, 2018
Page 5
Director Alexandria Bombach’s documentary “On Her Shoulders” is the story of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi
activist and survivor of ISIS atrocities who works to bring international attention to the plight of the Yazidi.
Documenting the Human Experience
o PinionAted
J udge
by
d arleen o rtega
I just finished my annual trip to
the Full Frame Documentary Film
Festival in Durham, N.C, where
I saw 16 premiere feature-length
documentaries in four days, in
most cases followed by a discus-
sion with the film’s director and
sometimes others involved in the
production. This year I can enthu-
siastically recommend everything I
saw. My reviews for the first two
days of films appear below in my
order of preference. I’ll follow with
reviews of the balance of the films
next week.
Perhaps the most inspiring film
I saw this festival was “On Her
Shoulders,” an examination of the
experience and perspective of a
survivor of ISIS atrocities who, out
of equal parts reluctance and deter-
mination, became a human rights
activist in 2014 at the age of 21. At
19, Nadia Murad’s Northern Iraqi
Yazidi community was targeted by
ISIS; 18 members of her family
were killed and others (including
herself and girls much younger
than she) were held captive as sex-
ual slaves. The Yazidis are a Kurd-
ish religious minority in Europe
who were specifically targeted for
genocide by ISIS. Ultimately, Mu-
rad escaped and fled and immedi-
ately began speaking out about her
experiences, with the aim of bring-
ing international attention to the
plight of the Yazidi, many of whom
still live in bondage.
Director Alexandria Bombach
keeps her focus on Murad, but
with an aim very different from the
journalists who pepper her with in-
trusive questions that turn her into
a sort of celebrity. The result is an
exceedingly thoughtful examina-
tion of the ways we turn people like
Nadia into icons, requiring them to
relive their trauma and diverting
the focus from the real urgency
of their cause. Bombach takes the
time to ask Nadia what she wishes
people would ask her, and to show
us the toll it takes for her to relive
her trauma again and again, driven
by survivor guilt and the urgency
of her concern for those left behind.
And in this beautifully constructed
examination, Bombach helps us to
see, at least for brief moments, the
absurdity of our relative comfort in
the West and our attendant unwill-
ingness to be moved to action on
behalf of those who experience un-
speakable suffering. The film will
have a theatrical release and will
also be available on PBS’s POV
and on Amazon.
Another of my favorites was
“Three Identical Strangers,”
which explores the story of three
identical triplets who accidentally
discovered each other for the first
time when they were 19 years old.
Director Tim Wardle masterfully
manages the shifts in tone neces-
sary to tell this story well; it begins
as a delightful human interest sto-
ry of the joy the three young men
experienced upon finding each
other, but gradually turns darker
as their parents (and eventually,
the men themselves) inquire as to
why they were not told about the
fact that they were triplets at the
time of adoption. The answers they
find over time are incomplete and
very troubling and, in the end, the
story provides a worthy vantage
point for a whole host of questions
around adoption, psychological re-
search, and the relative importance
of nature and nurture in making us
who we are.
“Hal” is an appropriately loving
look at the life and work of Hal Ash-
by, who directed such iconic 1970s
films as “Harold and Maude,” “Be-
ing There,” and “Coming Home.”
Director Amy Scott makes astute
use of clips from his films to illus-
trate both Ashby’s artistic vision
and his personal life, and also to
convey important things about the
era in which Ashby produced his
most successful work. Interviews
with an array of actors, directors
and other professional colleagues
and friends fill out a balanced pic-
ture of a man whose unwillingness
to compromise his artistic vision
brought him both success as an
artist and failure at working with-
in the studio system. Ashby’s films
pushed boundaries in so many
ways, and seem ahead of their
time even now. Indeed, they come
across as more racially diverse and
more awake to the problem of rac-
ism than do most films today. For
all his failings, it is clear that he
had a way of eliciting the best work
from artists and collaborators.
“Hale County This Morning,
This Evening” is an intimate look
at life in a mostly black, rural
community in Alabama. Director
C ontinued on P age 10