About the Screening
Twenty-three-year-old Nadia Murad’s life is an array of exhausting undertakings—from giving testimony before the U.N. to visiting refugee camps to soul-bearing interviews and meetings with government officials. With deep compassion and elegance, filmmaker Alexandria Bombach follows this strong-willed woman, who survived the 2014 genocide of the Yazidis and escaped the hands of ISIS to become a relentless beacon of hope for her people, even when at times she longs to lay aside this burden and have an ordinary life.
Includes a post-film conversation with Director Alexandria Bombach and Producer Hayley Pappas, moderated by Ella Taylor, NPR.org.
Alexandria Bombach is an award-winning cinematographer, editor, and director from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her first feature-length documentary, Frame By Frame, followed the lives of four Afghan photojournalists who were 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 for 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 had to weigh the costs of leaving or staying as the country's security deteriorated. 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 unearthed the emotion behind a proposed wilderness-area addition for a community in Montana as heritage and tradition are seemingly defended on both sides. Her Emmy award-winning 2012 series Moveshake captured the internal conflicts of people dedicating their lives to a cause.