FREELANCE CREATIVE
SEBASTIAN BERTOLI
Sebastian is an award-winning Australian freelance creative. He works as a screen director, producer, video editor, screenwriter and actor.
As a second generation Italian and Dutch immigrant, he balances precariously between the worlds of the colonial settler and foreign outsider, shaped by coming of age in a country in the throes of cultural adolescence.
Sebastian has worked worldwide as an actor, appearing in large-scale productions from HBO, DreamWorks, Playtone, Bad Robot, Warner Bros Television, ABC, SBS, Seven Studios, December Media, Fremantle Media and Gristmill.
Sebastian holds a 2006 BA (Acting) from Ballarat Arts Academy and a 2017 Masters (Film & Television) from the Victorian College of the Arts.
Over the last decade, he has directed over a dozen shorts and web episodes, exploring both naturalistic and stylised genre work. He is passionate about female-driven work, stories that explore underrepresented and unconventional characters.
Short film Tiny Darlings (2022) was recently awarded Best Fantasy at Hybrid Genre Australia, experimental horror short Carved Into Flesh (2019) was awarded Best Male Director, Best Cinematography and Best Editor at Aphelion Film Festival and Best Composer at Atlantic Bridge Film Festival, and psychedelic road trip short The Happiest Of My Life (2015), awarded Best Ozploitation Short Film at the American Grindhouse Film Festival.
In 2019 he was selected for the Directors Immersive program at CinefestOZ to pitch sci-fi feature film She Now Romeo, written by Jeni Bezuidenhout, in front of an industry panel.
He was selected for the 2020 La Selva’s Werner Herzog Colombian Jungle Film Accelerator program, however was unable to attend due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a video editor Sebastian has experience with both commercial and narrative content, creating content for promotional packages, festival submission, internal usage and social media.
Short film Blue (dir. Dia Taylor, 2017) demonstrates his passion and skill for editing narrative, with over 4 million YouTube views.
Music video directing and editing credits include clips for Ru Paul’s Drag Race Down Under finalist Karen From Finance, Forest Collective and Die Roten Punkte.
Sebastian has just wrapped principal photography on his debut feature film, crime family drama We Will Never Die, which he directed and also appears in, along with screenwriter/producer/actor Jeni Bezuidenhout.
Jeni and Sebastian run film production company Panopticon Collective. They live in the western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.