Nadia Ben Rachid started her editing career in 1985 working with Roman Polanski on Pirates, Bitter Moon and Frantic. She has edited many acclaimed films such as Timbuktu, Waiting for Happiness, Bamako, Life On Earth and Holy Lands. Ben Rachid has also edited numerous documentaries among them all of Anne Aghion's films including 2009 Cannes Official Selection documentary My Neighbor, My Killer and Michka Saäl's Les prisonniers de Beckett. In 2015, she was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and also won the Best Editing César for Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu. She describes the process of editing as shaping a director's idea into a "harmonious, fluid idea". Her film editing has been called "nimble" by the New Statesman.