Faculty
Alexandria Bombach is an award-winning director, cinematographer, and editor from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her most recent feature-length documentary, ON HER SHOULDERS, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival where Alexandria was awarded Best Director in the U.S. Documentary competition. ON HER SHOULDERS follows Nadia Murad, a 23-year-old Yazidi woman who survived genocide and sexual slavery committed by ISIS. Repeating her story to politicians and media, Nadia was thrust onto the world stage as the voice of her people. Away from the podium, Nadia suddenly found herself having to deal with fame as well as bureaucracy and people’s good intentions.
Alexandria’s first feature-length documentary, FRAME BY FRAME, followed the lives of four Afghan photojournalists who are 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 25 film festival awards and screened in front of 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 must weigh the costs of leaving or staying as the country’s security deteriorates. 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 unearths 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.
Choosing to live nomadically since 2010, Alexandria is confused when people ask her when she thinks she’ll “settle down.” She is happiest when walking across the Outback of Australia with feral camels, swimming in a secret women’s swimming pool in Kabul, or spending hours riding in the bed of a truck with her camera in her lap. As a friend once observed, “you’re a filmmaker like Indiana Jones is a professor.”
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