Amazon Primes Expats was set and filmed in Hong Kong. But its not being shown there

Amazon Prime’s new drama series “Expats,” starring Nicole Kidman, is currently unavailable to watch in Hong Kong despite being set and partly filmed in the city.

The drama largely centers around Kidman’s character, Margaret, an American living in Hong Kong in 2014, when months-long pro-democracy protests swept the city — a topic covered in a forthcoming episode of the series, according to its director.

Named for the umbrellas used by demonstrators to shield themselves from police pepper spray, the Umbrella Movement saw Hong Kong’s financial district immobilized for 79 days in 2014 by protesters calling for universal suffrage in the semi-autonomous Chinese city.

Those calls were dismissed by authorities and a crackdown on dissent has transformed Hong Kong in the decade since — especially since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law in 2020 following nearly a year of renewed anti-government protests that roiled the city.

TOPSHOT - People gather at a shopping mall in the Shatin area of Hong Kong on September 11, 2019, to sing a recently penned protest song titled 'Glory to Hong Kong which has been gaining popularity in the city. (Photo by Nicolas ASFOURI / AFP) (Photo by NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP via Getty Images) Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images

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Critics say the national security law has wiped out opposition to the government and curtailed political freedoms in the once outspoken city. The Hong Kong government has repeatedly denied the legislation is suppressing freedoms and insisted the law has “restored stability” to the city following the 2019 protests.

In 2021, Hong Kong passed a film censorship law to “safeguard national security,” in a move critics said would curb creativity in its world famous movie industry and further reduce freedoms.

That year, Hong Kong also granted Oscar-winner Kidman an exemption from its tough Covid-19 quarantine rules to film in the city. Four members of her crew were also granted relief from the restrictions, Hong Kong officials said at the time.

But despite rolling out the red carpet for the Hollywood star and Amazon’s billing of “Expats” as a worldwide release, the series is listed as “currently unavailable to watch in your location” for Prime viewers in Hong Kong.

“A concern is that the scene of the 2014 protests could have violated the…2020 national security law,” Yaqiu Wang, a research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at the US-based nonprofit Freedom House, told CNN.

“The crackdown is so severe on freedom of expression and because of the vagueness of the law, many people are self-censoring because nobody knows where the line is.”

And, with one eye on China as a potential market for streaming, Amazon is perhaps wary of “pre-empting any unforeseen business risks in the future by showing ‘Expats’ with controversial episodes in Hong Kong,” Kenny Ng, director of Centre for Film and Moving Picture Research at the Hong Kong Academy of Film, told CNN.

Amazon also has a responsibility to protect those living in Hong Kong who worked on the production, Wang added.

“If a company like (Amazon) are so concerned, the fear of people who are involved in smaller productions will be even more severe,” she said. “I think it exacerbates the environment of self-censorship that is already very severe and pervasive within … the Hong Kong industries that involve freedom of expression.”

Amazon declined to comment when contacted by CNN.

A Hong Kong government spokesperson told CNN it had “no comment on operational arrangement of individual businesses.”

As of June 2023, Reuters reported that at least 21 movies and short films had scenes cut or their release blocked by Hong Kong’s Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Association (OFNAA) since October 2021.

“Expats’” director Lulu Wang told BBC Radio 4 on January 22 that they “shot most of the political stuff in Los Angeles,” and also used news footage to represent the 2014 protests.

“It was very important to me to be able to show this particular moment in this year in Hong Kong very accurately,” she said.

“It’s definitely challenging,” she added. “There is a lot of questions of like ‘Can you show this? What can you not?’ We worked with legal teams to really guide us, because you have to do it responsibly also, and there’s so many people who are working on it, who live in Hong Kong.”

CNN’s Kathleen Magramo contributed to this report.

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