She remains upbeat until the end, but McLeod’s shots of her in quiet moments suggest Pankhurst has become accustomed to masking some feelings. Asked how she’d like to be remembered, she tells McLeod “as a kind human being – nothing more, nothing less”. By the end of Clean, it’s clear she was much more.

Next week’s film, Kids Raising Kids, from writer/director Patrick Abboud, also highlights overlooked lives, as cameras are allowed for the first time into Canberra College’s CC Cares program, Australia’s only school for pregnant and teenage parents. The program helps teen parents (with their kids in tow) complete the final years of school, even if it takes them five years.

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The film follows several students in the final weeks before graduation, and it’s often sobering viewing – there’s Taila, who is trying to complete her studies while dealing with two kids and an abusive partner (at one point in the film, she has a visible black eye, and stories of the abuse she has endured are shocking); Charlie, who has a history of illicit drug abuse and struggles to focus; and Eva, whose Ugandan diplomat parents dropped her at the school telling Jan Marshall, the school’s remarkable head teacher, to take her or he would kill her.

Marshall has a special relationship with Eva, who is seeking asylum; she is the student’s only support now her parents have returned to Uganda. Marshall, who pioneered the CC Cares program, was even at the birth of Eva’s son, Ocean. Abboud’s film doesn’t sensationalise, but Kids Raising Kids is a bit of a rollercoaster – the picture it subtly paints is both maddening (several of the featured kids come from backgrounds of foster care or abusive homes) and hopeful.

Australia Uncovered is on SBS, Tuesday, 8.30pm and SBS On Demand

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