Nicole Kidman to headline SXSW screen conference

The Academy Award-winning actor will headline a star-studded series of screen panels later this month at the inaugural festival

Nicole Kidman will offer audiences a glimpse behind the curtain of her hitmaking production company Blossom Films. Picture: AFP

South By Southwest Sydney (SXSW) is bringing out the big guns, announcing that Nicole Kidman will headline a star-studded series of screen conferences this month at its inaugural festival.

The Academy Award-winner will take audiences behind the curtain of her female-forward production company Blossom Films, which has produced such hits as Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers.

The event, billed as “A Spotlight on Blossom Films”, will see Kidman in conversation with her producing partner Per Saari, with whom she launched the company back in 2010 and who she jokingly refers to as her ­“second husband”.

This discussion forms part of a duo of panels curated by Australians in Film (AiF), in collaboration with Screen Australia.

For AiF board chair Emma Cooper, bringing Kidman to SXSW was a no-brainer. “Nicole has really supported the organisation since 2001,” Ms Cooper told The Australian. “We really wanted to bring someone out for South By Southwest who represents what we’re doing here in Los Angeles.”

Barry Humphries and Kidman at an Australians in Film party in Los Angeles, honouring Australian Oscar nominees in 2001.

Ms Cooper said AiF, which started in 2001 with casual film screenings for friends and two decades later has evolved into a global platform for the Australian TV and film industry, sees SXSW as “an opportunity to bring Australians the spirit and the energy of what we do overseas in our Hollywood community”.

No less worthy of attention is the second conference, dubbed “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood”, scheduled for Monday, October 16. Which will bring together two of Australia’s great entertainment exports: actor Jason Clarke, who this year made a star turn in Christopher Nolan’s historical epic Oppenheimer, and director Phillip Noyce.

They will be joined in conversation by Perth actor – and AiF’s Heath Ledger Scholarship recipient – Charmaine Bingwa, who got her breakin TV’s The Good Fight and starred alongside Will Smith in Emancipation, and Sydney screenwriter Amy Wang (Crazy Rich Asians 2).

Emma Cooper, centre bottom left, at The Australians in Film Oscar Nominee event to celebrate the Australian nominees for the 2023 Academy Awards. Picture: Australians in Film / Phil Faraone

“Jason and Charmaine are actors who didn’t get their break in Australia. They came to Hollywood under the radar, and made a really big name for themselves here. Those kind of stories are really interesting to take back home,” said Cooper.

Speaking to The Australian in the hours after the Los Angeles premiere of his latest film, Fast Charlie, Noyce, 73, said that the panel will be about “how we take the success that we earn in Hollywood back to Australia – and how we can transition between the two film industries and cultures”.

“Hopefully the discussion will be quite revealing, and stretch across a 40-year period of Australian filmmakers who have tried to make it at home and in Hollywood,” he said.

Actors Sarah Snook and Jason Clarke at the Australians In Film Awards 2019. Picture: Court McAllister

Rabbit-Proof Fence director Phillip Noyce with the film's main actors Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury and Laura Monaghan.

For the first time in its 35-year history, South By Southwest will leave its Austin, Texas, birthplace for Sydney. The festival, from October 15-22, will see 1000 events, keynotes and performances. Speakers include Charlie Brooker, creator of Black Mirror, Chance the Rapper and Cal Henderson, co-founder of Slack.