It was directed by Alexandria Bombach and produced by Hayley Pappas, Brock Williams and Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown under the banner of RYOT Films.

The film follows Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad on her three-month tour of Berlin, New York, and Canada, as she met with politicians and journalists to alert the world to the massacres and kidnapping happening in her native land.

In 2014, at the age of 19, Murad had been kidnapped with hundreds of other women and girls by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and held as a sex slave; she managed to escape.

Also appearing in the film are Barack Obama, Ban Ki-moon, Murad Ismael, Simone Monasebian, Michelle Rempel, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Ahmed Khudida Burjus, Amal Clooney, and Luis Moreno Ocampo.

[10] 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.

The website's critical consensus reads, "On Her Shoulders traces one woman's incredible journey to offer an inside look at modern political advocacy – and a challenge to viewers yearning to [sic] effect their own change.

[15] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian said that On Her Shoulders raises significant questions, asking: "has our compassion on international human rights become Malala-ised?

[23] John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter, described the film as "a grueling one, full of murder and rape and pleas for the world's attention", but suggests that it "is most likely to find viewers on small screens".

[25] Tim Grierson of Screen International also praised the film's direction, he wrote, that "Bombach brings a hopeful but clear-eyed perspective to the material".