Mona Nicoara

Born in Communist Romania, Mona Nicoara dedicated her early years to becoming a poet in an underground creative community which defied the strictures of the Ceausescu regime. After the 1989 Revolution, Mona Nicoara began mixing creative work with human rights activism for groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and continued these parallel tracks after moving to New York for graduate school at Columbia University in 1995. Mona Nicoara started working in film as an Associate Producer for the Academy Award-nominated Children Underground (2001). Beginning in 2005, she directed and produced Our School, which premiered in the US at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, was awarded the top honor at SilverDocs, and went to over 60 festivals worldwide. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, Decat o Revista, Dilema, Harper's Bazaar, etc.