Monica Zinn is an LA-based filmmaker and USC graduate from Fairfax, Virginia. When her older sister passed away after years of struggle with mental health issues, Monica began making documentaries as a way to better understand and embrace what it means to live with a mental illness.

At the age of 17, Monica released Perfection (2011): a documentary profiling young women with eating disorders that went on to win "Best Documentary" at the Virginia Student Film Festival. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, her follow-up documentary, Self Inflicted (2015), explored the hidden world of Non Suicidal Self Injury (NSSI), earning a Bronze Telly in Education. In 2018 her third documentary Psyched, won the IMPACT DOCS Award of Recognition for its profiling of a young woman's journey to understand anxiety and depression through art and nature. After all three of these films were picked up for worldwide educational distribution, Zinn made two additional documentaries about mental health for teens for educational distributor Human Relations Media, titled Reaching Out (2019) and Zach's Story (2020)

​In 2019, Monica began her own production company, Takushi, where she continues to make documentaries professionally, but shifted her personal focus to writing and directing narrative films. Her comedy short Sweet Repose (2019) debuted on WhoHaha while her narrative short, Kept (2019), earned half a dozen laurels, including Best Picture & Best Director at L'Auteur International Short Film Festival. Her work has been covered in outlets like The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and WIRED, while all of her documentary films are educationally distributed in classrooms across the country.