Mona Nicoara was born in Communist Romania; after the 1989 Revolution she began creative work with human rights activism, and continued these parallel tracks after moving to New York to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University in 1995. She started working in film in 1997 as an associate producer for Children Underground, a U.S. feature-length documentary about street children which received the Special Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, went on to win the Gotham Documentary Achievement Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Feature Documentary.