Hittman was born and raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn. She attended Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, where she was a theater buff. She graduated from Indiana University in 2001 with a BA in theater and drama, but later went on to study art and film, and in 2010 received her MFA from the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts. Hittman's first feature film, It Felt Like