Monika Borgmann was born in Germany and studied Arabic and political science in Bonn and Damascus. From 1990 to 2001, she worked in the Middle East and North Africa as a correspondent for German radio and the weekly Die Zeit magazine. Borgmann has dual German and Lebanese nationality and is the author of the book Saïd Mekbel, Une mort à la lettre. The films Massaker (2005) and Tadmor (2016) are part of her filmography.