Writer, producer, university lecturer, advisor to the Film Section.

Mona Nicoară was born in communist Romania and, until 1989, dedicated her early years to becoming a poet in a small, largely underground community of young writers who did not abide by the creative conventions of the Ceaușescu era. In 1997, she started working in film as an associate producer on Children Underground, which received the Special Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. Her directorial debut Our School premiered in the United States at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival and went on to be shown at over seventy festivals worldwide. It was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Best US Feature at AFI SilverDocs and was nominated for Best Eastern European Documentary at the Silver Eye Awards and for Best Romanian Documentary at the Gopo Awards. Nicoară also works as a festival programmer for One World Romania and fARAD, and has taught film, writing and literature at Columbia University, Cooper Union, New York University and Rutgers.