Jekaterina Oertel is a Russian make-up designer and film director.
Born in St. Petersburg (Lenin-grad) in 1966, she grew up in the GDR from the age of four, before returning to Russia to attend the Academy of Film and Theatre in Moscow. After graduating in 1987 she returned to the GDR, where she worked as a make-up artist and assistant at the DEFA Studios. Since 1990 she has been princi-pally responsible for make-up and hairstyling on over 50 national and international film and televi-sion productions including Tom Tykwer’s ‘Run Lola Run’, Jay Parini’s Oscar-nominated feature film "The Last Station", Anno Saul’s "Where Is Fred?", Bille August’s "Night Train to Lisbon" and Roland Emmerich’s adventure film "10,000 B.C.". She was nominated for an Emmy in 2013 in the category Outstanding Makeup for a Single Camera Series for her work as make-up designer on Neil Jordan’s multi-award-winning series "The Borgias". Since 2008 she has also worked on the Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU project. She was Head of the Department of Make-up and Hairstyling during filming from 2008 to 2011, and took over as editing director in the extensive post-production phase. Her credits include co-director of the film "DAU. Natasha", which was shown in competition at the Berlinale 2020. For several years she also ran a special effects workshop that produced life-like silicon dummies of all DAU’s inhabitants which were put on show at DAU events in Paris and London.