- [Sasha] There was
a time in my life
I trusted everyone,
especially my family.
(music)
I am Sasha Joseph Neulinger.
I am the director of Rewind.
Rewind is a film about
my personal journey
to expose and understand
my childhood.
Where I was a survivor of
childhood sexual abuse.
I'm not some director
who's detached from the
family or the story,
like this is my childhood
and I'm inviting my family
and together we are choosing
to reach out to the world
and say this happened to us
and its happening at an alarming
and staggering rate.
And we need to talk about it.
I moved to Montana
from Pennsylvania
to study film production
at Montana State University.
To be able to marry
that joy of nature
with my joy of film,
it was a win-win.
I truly felt
more joy at that moment
in my life,
than I think I had
ever felt before.
There was still this,
this nagging in the
back of my mind.
This voice
that said you're dirty,
you're disgusting,
you're unloveable.
Finally I recognized
that if I didn't stop
what I was doing and
truly work
to identify where that
voice was coming from,
it was going to haunt me
for the rest of my life.
In order to find the
source of that voice,
I needed to re-examine
my childhood.
So, I immediately thought,
okay well my dad
shot home videos
throughout my childhood.
If he still has them
maybe that's a
good place to start
and I just started
popping tapes in
and I would watch.
Within one tape I'd
see one of the cutest,
sweetest moments
from my childhood
and then there would
be an in tape cut
and I would see one of the
scariest people in my life. 
Watching that helped
reframe for me
the context of what happened
because as a child victim,
I thought that what was
happening to me was my fault.
That I had done
something to deserve it
and in watching my abusers,
I was able to very
clearly recognize
on a cognitive level that
I was completely separate
from what they
chose to do to me.
I think that a universal truth
is that every human being
has experienced
some form of trauma.
Whether it's child sexual abuse,
whether it's losing a loved one
and I really believe
through my own
personal experience
that we can't
push trauma under the rug
and pretend it doesn't exist.
Looking back at these
unresolved issues
from my childhood
asking these questions,
in part for my own
personal catharsis,
but also in part to
illuminate
just how cyclical child
sexual abuse can be
and the fact that we
need to talk about it.
I want to live our lives
not in fear of our past.
What scares me about
not looking at this is
that if we go through
the rest of our lives
in a place where
we can't touch that
or talk about it then
we're still victims of it.
The life that I am able to
allow myself to live today
as a result of the hard
emotional work I did,
through making this film
has given me the opportunity
to truly enjoy life.
And whatever I do next,
it won't be about
what happened to me
when I was four years old.
(soft music)
