Sascha Ettinger-Epstein

Sascha Ettinger Epstein is a documentary director/shooter known for raw, observational character-driven Australian stories. Her first film Painting with Light in a Dark World about underbelly street photographer Peter Darren Moyle, which collected various accolades, was the beginning of an exploration of beauty in darkness which has preoccupied Sascha throughout her artistic career. Her following films The Oasis, a longitudinal observational study of an inner-city youth refuge, the ten-years-later sequel Life After the Oasis, Playing in the Shadows, about an after dark basketball tournament for kids from a notorious housing estate in Woolloomooloo, and Destination Arnold, following two female Aboriginal bodybuilders, have continued the same theme. Sascha's documentary The Pink House, about the last original brothel in Kalgoorlie won Best Documentary at the Sydney Film Festival 2017. The Department is the culmination of many years observation and interest in young people experiencing social inequality and the systems around them.