Mona Xia

Mona is a Chinese-American, former studio executive turned documentary filmmaker. She grew up between Beijing and Los Angeles and received a BA in Cinema Studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Initially, she worked in scripted development and moved into production on Netflix studio films like The Irishman. Mona then discovered her passion for nonfiction stories and transitioned to the documentary series team as a creative assistant. Shadowing on documentaries like My Octopus Teacher and jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, she eventually became a creative manager, where she oversaw a slate of fifteen shows, including Keep Sweet, Gunther’s Millions, and Our Universe.

Mona was fueled by a desire to bridge the gap between commercial documentaries and diverse, under-represented stories, so she left Netflix in 2022 to pursue her own projects. Since then, Mona has freelance produced for docuseries like Surf Girls Hawai’i (Amazon Sports) and Sprint (Netflix). Additionally, Mona directed and produced the short documentary Kowloon!, about the biggest Chinese restaurant in the US. The film won the Jonathan Laxamana Emerging Filmmakers Award, was nominated for Best Short at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and will be screening at festivals in LA, Chicago, and the East Coast. She also recently received a grant from Pacific Islanders in Communications to direct and produce an animation-documentary short film.

Mona also works on branded content, social media content creation, short documentary films, as well as feature-length and episodic documentary series.