She attended the Foundation Course in Media Studies al London College of Printing, then enrolled at the film and video department of the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich (1993–98).
Her graduation work, a short film Hotel Belgrad,[1] received wide acclaim and won several awards.
[2][3] Her first feature film Das Fräulein explored a very personal topic — lives of three generations of Yugoslavian women trying to build a life in Switzerland, each haunted with dramas of the past.
[4][5][6] For this movie, she received Golden Leopard at Locarno Festival and was immediately included into the circle of leading Swiss filmmakers.
[9][10] Štaka acted as producer of the film Glaubenberg (2018) directed by Thomas Imbach.