Powerful new six-part drama series Stateless will debut on the ABC and ABC iview on Sunday, 1 March at 8.40pm, following its world premiere at distinguished film festival, the 70th Berlinale, next month.
Starring a multi award-winning cast including Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid’s Tale), Jai Courtney (Suicide Squad), Asher Keddie (The Cry, Offspring), Fayssal Bazzi (The Commons), Marta Dusseldorp (Janet King, A Place to Call Home), with Dominic West (The Affair, The Wire) and Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, Carol), Stateless is a compelling drama that centres on four very different people whose lives intersect at a detention centre in the Australian desert.
An air hostess escaping a cult, an Afghan refugee saving his family, an Australian father escaping a dead-end job and a bureaucrat trying to contain a national scandal each struggle – to the limits of their sanity – with an immigration system that is itself struggling. In their stories we see the challenges of border protection countries around the world are currently grappling with.
Co-created by Blanchett, Tony Ayres and Elise McCredie, Stateless is written by McCredie and Belinda Chayko, directed by Emma Freeman and Jocelyn Moorhouse, produced by Sheila Jayadev and Paul Ranford for Matchbox Pictures and Dirty Films, with Blanchett, Andrew Upton, Ayres and Liz Watts as Executive Producers. McCredie is Showrunner and Executive Producer. ABC Executive Producers are Sally Riley and Andrew Gregory. The series will be distributed worldwide by NBCUniversal International Distribution.
Stateless is a Matchbox Pictures and Dirty Films production for the ABC and received major production investment from Screen Australia and the ABC and is financed with support from the South Australian Film Corporation. Matchbox Pictures is an NBCUniversal International Studios company and Stateless will be distributed worldwide by NBCUniversal.
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Top photo: Stateless, Gordon (Dominic West) at the GOPA Eistedfodd, image credit Ben King