Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid's Tale) fronts a harrowing new Netflix drama, Stateless, about a flight attendant who ends up at an immigration detention center in the Australian desert with, mysteriously, a passport identifying her as German and the accent to match.

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The series, co-created by none other than Cate Blanchett, is inspired in part by the real-life scandal that saw Australian resident Cornelia Rau unlawfully detained in the early 2000s – follow the link for more on the Stateless true story.

"The conversation began not with any particular story, but with the immigration detention stories and the transformation of public conversation around that," Blanchett told Deadline.

]"That was the backdrop and the atmosphere in which we began wanting to work together. It’s not based on any one person’s experience; there’s been a painstaking amount of research, including scores of people that she [writer Elise McCredie] spoke to and my experience with the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]."

Here's everything you need to know about Stateless.

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When is Stateless released on Netflix?

All six episodes of Stateless will arrive on Netflix on Wednesday 8th July 2020. And here are some first-look images to go along with the date announcement.

The series already premiered on ABC in Australia on 1st March 2020.

Is there a trailer for Stateless?

Yes! You can watch the intense trailer below, in which the paths of four diverse strangers intersect at an immigration detention center in the Australian outback.

Who is in the cast of Stateless?

A bucketload of Australian talent, that's who!

Cate Blanchett, as well as co-creating the series and serving as executive producer, is also part of the Stateless cast as glamorous cult leader Pat.

The main cast is made up of The Handmaid's Tale's Yvonne Strahovski as flight attendant Sofie, Fayssal Bazzi as Afghan refugee Ameer and Suicide Squad star Jai Courtney as newly employed prison guard Cam who is uncomfortable with what he sees.

The Affair's Dominic West will also appear, along with Australian stars Asher Keddie (as seen in The Cry), Marta Dusseldorp and Soraya Heidari.

What is Stateless about?

Stateless follows four strangers of various backgrounds who find themselves in an Australian detention centre for their own very different reasons. The show then flashbacks to reveal the circumstances that brought them there, oscillating between the four narratives until they intersect in Australia's immigration system.

The four detainees include an air hostess on the run from a cult, an Afghan refugee seeking a new life with his family, a young father-of-three escaping a dead-end job and a bureaucrat caught up in a national scandal. Each story will confront issues of border control in a different way, though all will show the underlying humanity behind the topic.

The series was inspired by the real-life case of German citizen Cornelia Rau, a permanent citizen of Australia who was unlawfully detained in 2004.

Creators Cate Blanchett, Tony Ayres and Elisa McCredie said: “Stateless has been a labor of love for many years and we could not be more thrilled that it will reach an international audience on Netflix. The issues addressed in the series have universal resonance but have been cloaked in silence and muddied by fear and misinformation.

“Our hope is that Stateless will generate a global conversation around our systems of border protection and how our humanity has been affected by them.”

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