Jakob Moritz Erwa was born in Graz on July 17 1981. After graduating from the Höhere Technische Lehranstalt für Kunst und Design in 2000, he went on to work for several film production companies. From 2001 until 2007, he studied at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen (HFF) in Munich. During that time, he and Rachel Honegger founded their production company "mojo:pictures". He directed several short films under the company's banner, as well as his HFF graduation feature film "Heile Welt" (2007), a documentary-style coming-of-age drama. "Heile Welt" won the German Independence Award at the Filmfest Oldenburg and the Grand Jury Prize at the Diagonale in Graz. In 2007, Erwa developed and directed the TV show "tschuschen: power", which portrays a group of immigrant adolescents in Vienna, for Austrian network ORF.

Erwa's sophomore feature "HomeSick" (DE/AT), in which an ambitious music student feels increasingly controlled and persecuted by her environment, premiered at the 2015 Berlin IFF. The same year, Erwa began production on his next feature, an adaptation of the youth novel "Die Mitte der Welt" ("Center of My World"). The film premiered at the 2016 Munich Film Festival, and was released in November 2016.