Monica Zinn is a Chicago based filmmaker and USC graduate from Fairfax, Virginia, who spent the last 8 years producing and directing in Los Angeles.
She started filmmaking at a young age, releasing Perfection (2011): a documentary profiling young women with eating disorders that went on to win "Best Documentary" at the Virginia Student Film Festival, when she was 17. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, her follow-up documentary, Self Inflicted (2015), which explores the hidden world of Non Suicidal Self Injury (NSSI), earned 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 shifted her personal focus to writing and directing narrative films, while continuing to direct and produce documentaries professionally. 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.
She is currently living in Chicago; writing, producing, and directing videos for Skalawag Productions, as well as working on personal projects.
She started filmmaking at a young age, releasing Perfection (2011): a documentary profiling young women with eating disorders that went on to win "Best Documentary" at the Virginia Student Film Festival, when she was 17. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, her follow-up documentary, Self Inflicted (2015), which explores the hidden world of Non Suicidal Self Injury (NSSI), earned 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 shifted her personal focus to writing and directing narrative films, while continuing to direct and produce documentaries professionally. 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.
She is currently living in Chicago; writing, producing, and directing videos for Skalawag Productions, as well as working on personal projects.