the issue and to her story". Bombach had to be careful about what she said to the financial staff at RYOT Films, however, as the film company wanted her to produce a short profile, not a feature film. Filming Bombach began filming Murad in 2016. Principal photography took place in Berlin, New York, and Canada over a period of three months, as the crew followed Murad around on her meetings with politicians and journalists in an effort to alert the world to the massacres and kidnapping going on in her native land, in addition the director had no idea what was going to happen day to day. Bombach said this was the hardest film she had ever made. She added: "It was like losing some humanity myself by not putting the camera down and being able to hug this person". Whilst filming, Bombach recalls, "I had a mic on Nadia for a lot of the time and I was on a long lens, so I was hearing what people were saying to her. Sometimes I wanted to push those people away from her. She never reacted in a way where she seemed frustrated or angry or upset with anyone. She was just so consistently gracious and patient with everyone". Editing Before beginning editing, Bombach received a Skype call from RYOT to confirm that she would be producing a short profile of Murad, and Bombach said she lied to them. She spent the next six weeks editing the film in her parents' garage in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She hired translators to join the editing crew who were familiar with Murad's native language of Kurdish Kurmanji, and worked together with her assistant editor, Michael Bucuzzo; a transcriber, Frank Quatrone; and two translators. After finishing the editing of the 95-minute film, Bombach called Bryn Mooser, CEO of RYOT Films; she recalls being terrified to confess that she had made a feature film. The phone call lasted about an hour, and in the end, Mooser said yes to a feature film. After receiving the CEO's approval, the editing group did not send the film to the spring film festivals so they could spend more time polishing the editing. Release Critical reception On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "On Her Shoulders traces one