In her versatile work for cinema, she has also founded and been director of the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival.

Her debut short film, Fit (1994), was created for her NYU studies and was shortlisted for the Annual Student Academy Awards.

It also received a Best Actor prize for its all-male ensemble cast, and a Jury Special Mention for directing, from the Sarajevo IFF.

It had its North American premiere at the Toronto IFF, followed by the New York Film Festival to critical acclaim.

[14][17] Tsangari's next directorial project will be a film adaptation of Jim Crace's novel Harvest with an estimated release date of 2024.

She is a co-producer on Richard Linklater's Before Midnight (the third installment in the Before trilogy, shot in Messenia, Greece), where she also appeared in the role of Ariadni.

In 2019 she was on the Platform Prize jury at the Toronto International Film Festival Tsangari served as the projection designer and video director on the creative team headed by Dimitris Papaioannou that designed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

In 2009, she created "Reflections", a series of large-scale projections commissioned for the opening of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens.