LIFE AFTER THE OASIS trailer
In 2008, feature documentary The Oasis, shocked Australia with its gritty insight into the lives of wayward teens at a chaotic youth refuge in inner-city Sydney. Drug psychoses, emotional breakdowns, teenage pregnancies and the dangers of street life were writ large for a national audience.
Released with an independent report by the National Youth Commission, the film generated an outpouring of social and political goodwill, with the then-Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, pledging to halve homelessness by 2020. Ten years and six Prime Ministers later, with social inequality and homelessness worse than ever, Life After The Oasis
revisits the original participants who share how their lives have evolved since those fraught times.
Transitioning seamlessly between never-seen-before material from 2008 and contemporary footage, this film builds a rare, longitudinal portrait of these inspirational, disadvantaged young Australians. Now in their late 20s and 30s, they have weathered difficult and intense passages into adulthood, coming of age in a world rife with violence, poverty, addiction and mental illness. Yet their stories, though plagued by adversity, are stories of incredible resilience and survival.