Chris Carrea is an award-winning filmmaker from the Mohawks of Akwesasne and St. Regis Mohawk Tribe. Her work has been screened at several film festivals including Toronto Film Festival, Slamdance, Claremont Ferrand, IDFA, and more. Her films have also been shown in art museum exhibits around the world, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Bizart in Shanghai.
Professionally, Chris has served as a producer, director, cinematographer, and camera operator on a variety of projects including feature films, shorts, documentaries, TV series, and commercials. She has also taught courses in film production and cinematography at the UCLA Department of Film, Television and Digital Media and UCLA Extension Entertainment Studies.
Chris completed her BFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Otis College of Art and Design and then went on to receive an MFA from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. As a student, she received several awards including the Hollywood Foreign Press Award and the Motion Picture Association of America Award. Chris was also a Student Academy Award Finalist and a Film Independent Project Involve Fellow. Recently, she was a producer on the award-winning short film Every Morning, recognized with a Women In Media #ParityInAction Badge. Chris is currently producing a film with a distribution deal that explores themes of gender, identity, and expression. Throughout her multifaceted work in the arts, Chris is continually drawn to character-driven stories that focus on marginalized voices and underrepresented communities. Chris’ Mohawk community, Akwesasne, is situated on the border of Ontario, Quebec, and New York. Her work often explores themes of navigating life in the in-between. She is inspired by her family that have fought to maintain a tight-knit community despite the border that runs between them.