One of Australia's favourite expatriates, Nicole Kidman, has walked the red carpet in Sydney at a preview of her Prime Video series, Expats.
Kidman stars in and co-executive produced the six-part series, based on the best-selling novel by Janice YK Lee.
The screening is being held at Palace Verona Cinema in Paddington, one of the last events for the arthouse venue which is set to close in early 2024.
It's full circle for Kidman, who officially opened the Verona Cinema in 1996 with the premiere of Gus Van Sant’s feature To Die For, which she starred in alongside Matt Dillon and Joaquin Phoenix.
Blossom Films, Kidman's production company with Per Saari, is behind the Expats project, with Lulu Wang as creator, director, co-executive producer and writer.
It follows three American women: Margaret (Nicole Kidman), Hilary (Sarayu Blue), and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo) who are affected by a family tragedy.
The series is set in Hong Kong in 2014, the year of the city's umbrella movement mass protests in response to democracy crackdowns by the Chinese Communist Party.
Expats was criticised during its production in 2021 for Kidman's reported exemption from Hong Kong's strict quarantine rules, and for what some commentators saw as Beijing using her star power to soften perceptions of a city subject to strict censorship.
Filming began a few months after the arrest of Hong Kong media titan and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai, who founded the now defunct Apple Daily newspaper and is facing trial on national security charges.
Hong Kong has seen an exodus of expatriates, and its own citizens, since the 1997 Handover and the series of crackdowns that have followed.
Expats launches on Prime Video on January 26.
