Mieko Azuma was born in 1977 in Kyoto, Japan. After three years of art school, she studied traditional Japanese Arts and Crafts focusing on artistic casting at the Kanazawa Art Academy from 1996-2000. Since 2001, she studies documentary filmmaking and television journalism at the HFF Munich (University of Television and Film Munich). In 2008 she won the Munich Starter-Filmprize and the DAAD award for her films „Yuri – about Love“ (director) and „Tuesday“ (director of photography). The film AUGUST, a hybrid film - half fiction, half non-fiction is a co-production of if…-Productions with the German TV-channel ZDF and the Japanese partner Twin M Company. This Film was awarded at the FID Marseille and nominated for the “First Steps Award 2011”. Since 2015 the film „ Inside The Deep Black World“ is in production. In 2018 her latest film „Why I am here“ was premiered at the DOK Leipzig.