Filmmaking Is A Process That Allows Filmmakers To Answer Hard Questions by Alexandria Bombach

Film Courage: We had a few questions come in from our Youtube viewers and this one is from Ms. Green and she writes ‘How has what you’ve seen over time “changed” your view of life and does it ever show up in your filming? Did you edit it out?’

Alexandria Bombach, Documentary Filmmaker: I think the films I’m making are definitely starting from my experience and how I’m questioning how we are operating in this human experience at all.

So with FRAME BY FRAME there were just so many questions I was having as a storyteller about our perception and where that comes from. I wanted to make a film about Afghan photographers to talk about perception of a place that is so often this unknown known in a lot of ways. And with ON HER SHOULDERS I was really interested and this was kind of feeding off of that in a way where it was continuing telling a story about storytelling and the repetition and the packaging of stories of trauma and how we’re receiving that as an audience and our own relationship with apathy and empathy through these stories.

And so I don’t think I would make a film where I had already had the answer. I already feel very strongly about cigarettes and single-use plastics and I don’t think I’d ever make a film about it because I already know how I feel about it. I think all of these films are already questions that I’m asking myself and I think that’s where that energy comes from and relates to an audience asking themselves questions, too. I think that is where it comes from is my own questioning of life and how I’m experiencing the world.

Film Courage: Where does your love for storytelling come from? You had gone to study marketing and I can see why you took your love of the environment and things and wanted to add that to you marketing plan.

Alexandria: Maybe?

Film Courage: But where does your love for storytelling and film come from?

Alexandria: I’ve definitely have loved making videos since I was a kid. I don’t know, it’s a hard question to ask where does my love for storytelling come from because I’m having such a complicated relationship with storytelling even now with ON HER SHOULDERS and really questioning where we are coming from with storytellers and our responsibility to our subjects and who is telling what story and why we are telling it and all sorts of things and so it’s an interesting space to be in now.

I know that I don’t want to stop this work and will continue to make documentaries and probably die with a camera in my hands but I don’t even know where that comes from. I have no idea. I feel like each film that I make is kind of an exploration of things that I’m questioning about life. It’s a process of pulling things out of myself and answering hard questions. So I just love the process of it (I love all of that) and of course it introduces me to people I would have never had…it’s such an honor to have met Nadia even though I wish of course I would have never met Nadia. I wish none of this would have ever happened and that she was just an unknown person in a village in Sinjar but I am so, so thankful that I got to meet these people and be exposed to their patience and grace and empathy so I can see the world in a different way. It’s quite a gift and hopefully that’s translated to the audience too.

In her latest documentary, filmmaker Alexandria Bombach introduces us to the brave twenty-three-year-old Nadia Murad. Nadia’s life is a dizzying array of exhausting undertakings — from giving testimony before the U.N. to visiting refugee camps to soul-bearing media interviews and one-on-one meetings with top government officials. With deep compassion and a formal precision and elegance that matches Nadia’s calm and steely demeanor, filmmaker Alexandria Bombach follows this strong-willed young woman, who survived the 2014 genocide of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq 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 monumental burden and simply have an ordinary life.

Twenty-three-year-old Nadia Murad’s life is a dizzying array of exhausting undertakings—from giving testimony before the U.N. to visiting refugee camps to soul-bearing media interviews and one-on-one meetings with top government officials. With deep compassion and a formal precision and elegance that matches Nadia’s calm and steely demeanor, filmmaker Alexandria Bombach follows this strong-willed young woman, who survived the 2014 genocide of the Yazidis in Northern Iraq 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 monumental burden and simply have an ordinary life.

Nadia Murad is a human rights activist. She is a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, the recipient of the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize and the Sakharov Prize, and the UN’s first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. She has also received the Clinton Global Citizen Award, the Peace Prize from the United Nations association of Spain, and was named 2016 Woman of the Year by Glamour Magazine. Together with Yazda, a Yazidi rights organization, Nadia is currently working to bring ISIS before the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

 

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 ilm 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 TimesOp-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 RedReel has been producing award-winning, character-driven stories since 2009. Her 2013 filmCOMMON 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.