One of her first films was a short documentary in 1990 called Birth Our Own. Other directing filmography includes Trudell (2005).
Prior to 1996, Rae worked on documentary films including CBS’s 500 Nations, Turner Broadcasting's The Native Americans, and PBS's Storytellers of the Pacific. She produced a documentary on the making of Smoke Signals for the Sundance Channel and was an associate Producer on Silent Tears. For five years Rae was an adjunct professor at Boise State University, teaching film studies. She has also co-founded the True West Cinema Film Festival and sat on the board of Directors for True West and also TVTV, Boise’s community television outlet. She established a production center in Boise where independent filmmakers such as Gregory Bayne, Randy Redroad and Blackhorse Lowe worked. The production center is now non-operational, but in its time produced four feature films.
Rae has also worked as an Actress, in the movies Silent Tears (1998), Backroads (2000), Christmas in the Clouds (2001), Most Funniest (2005), Norman Waiting (2006), and Disappearance (2006).
In 2005 she was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for her film Trudell. Also in 2005 she won the Documentary Special Jury Award for Trudell at the Seattle International Film Festival.
In 2007 Trudell was nationally broadcast on PBS in the documentary series Independent Lens.
In 2008 she won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival with Frozen River. She also won Best Film at the Gotham Awards for Frozen River.
At the 2009 USA AFI Awards she won the AFI award for Movie of the Year again with Frozen River
In 2013 Rae was awarded the Vision Award at the Sun Valley Film Festival for her excellence in filmmaking.
In 2016 Rae was recognized by Cinereach with the Producers Award. She was the Inaugural recipient.
