Mimi Chakarova's journey began in a small village in southwest Bulgaria, where she grew up amidst the backdrop of Communism's collapse. Alongside her mother, she made the bold decision to immigrate to the United States, seeking a better life.
As a teenager, Chakarova found solace in photography, capturing the harsh realities of poverty in America that few others dared to confront. By the age of 17, she had already graduated from high school early and moved to San Francisco, where she enrolled at City College of San Francisco.
Without the resources to pursue filmmaking, Chakarova turned to documentary photography, eventually finding her way to making films. Her first feature-length documentary, "The Price of Sex," premiered at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York and earned her the Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking.
As an independent filmmaker, Chakarova continued to tackle global issues, examining conflict, corruption, and the sex trade. Her work garnered numerous awards and accolades, including the prestigious Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting and a Dart Awards Finalist for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma.
Chakarova went on to direct, shoot, and produce five other feature-length documentaries and over 30 award-winning short films through her own production company, A Moment in Time Productions. Her films premiered at esteemed festivals, including the Telluride Film Festival and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin.
In addition to her filmmaking endeavors, Chakarova is the founder and creative director of "Still I Rise Films," a documentary series celebrating resilience and overcoming adversity. In 2021, she established a fellowship program for women filmmakers and visual artists in need of support and mentorship.
Throughout her career, Chakarova has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Dorothea Lange Fellowship for outstanding work in documentary photography and the Magnum Photos Inge Morath Award for her work on sex trafficking.
Her work has been featured in prominent publications, such as National Geographic, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, London, and has appeared on networks like CBS News' "60 Minutes," CNN World, BBC World, Al Jazeera English, and PBS' FRONTLINE/World.
Chakarova's photography book, Capitalism, God, And A Good Cigar: Cuba Enters The Twenty-first Century, published by Duke University Press, showcases over 75 of her documentary photographs of Cuba.
A respected educator, Chakarova taught visual storytelling at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism for 14 years and has also taught reporting classes at Stanford University's African and African American Studies and Comparative Studies for Race and Ethnicity. She has lectured extensively in universities throughout the world.
