After directing several documentary shorts, she made her feature film debut with Faya Dayi (2021) which she won several awards for.

Jessica Beshir was born in 1988 in Mexico City,[1] the daughter of a Mexican mother and an Ethiopian father who was studying medicine in the country.

[2] Due to the government calling for the repatriation of the diaspora following the Ethiopian Civil War, her father brought the family to Harar, Ethiopia, where Beshir grew up, and worked as a surgeon in the country.

[2] She obtained her BA in film studies and literature from the University of California, Los Angeles.

[4] Her documentary short film He Who Dances on Wood (2016) is about a man, Fred Nelson, who practices tap dancing on a block of wood in a tunnel in Prospect Park, an urban park in Brooklyn.