Mirjam Unger
Born  1970  in  Vienna, she is director and writer. She studied film directing at the  University  of  Music  and Performing Arts, Film-Academy Vienna.  She received  numerous  awards  for  her short films  at  international  festivals (Nachricht  von  H.,  Speak  Easy,  More or  Less...). Since 2000 she works as an independent director and writer for  cinema and  TV.

Director's statement
“When we began to adapt Christine Nöstlingers autobiography FLY AWAY HOME to a film script we had no idea that an actual war in Syria would soon be so close and omnipresent. Nöstlinger was 9 years old when World War II ended and the movie shows her experience as a warchild more than 70 years ago in Vienna during these last weeks of war and the beginning of a new peace. We wanted to focus on this very universal topic, children in war. The most memorable sentence from the many hours of conversation with the author was: “The weeks in summer of 1945 when everything lay in ashes were the most exciting and maybe even the best weeks of my childhood.“ The ambivalence of war and a child’s perception of what for adults was a catastrophy and the question what children see as adventure are important elements of this film. Apart from the historical background of Fly Away Home, Christine Nöstlinger has of course been one of the most important authors of children's books in Austria for decades and she is a guiding figure for so many of us and also for me. As a woman with political attitude and as an artist she is a role model, someone who empowers. It is by no way a coincidence that in this film version of her childhood nearly all main departments of this period picture were staffed by women”.