The filmmaker graduated with an MFA in film production from UCLA in 1989, has received Fulbright Research Awards to the Middle East and is a member of the film faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. Her films have screened at international festivals including Sundance, Cannes (ACID), Rotterdam, Locarno and Toronto. Her documentary Massaker, for which she was also cinematographer, premiered at the Berlinale and won the FIPRESCI Award. Her 1996 feature film The Bloody Child was selected as one of the best films of the past fifty years by the Vienna International Film Festival in Austria.