Hong Kong directors make first Snowden film

Shot in less than a week on a shoestring budget, the film imagines the drama which must have unfolded in Hong Kong leading up to Snowden’s bombshell leaks on vast US surveillance programmes.

“To be the first one to really do anything about it...it was quite invigorating,” cinematographer and editor Edwin Lee told news agency AFP of the YouTube film that used local actors and shaky camera work reminiscent of the Bourne spy thriller series.

Snowden, 30, abandoned his high-paying job as an IT technician contracted to the National Security Agency and went to Hong Kong on May 20.

He then began issuing a series of leaks on the NSA’s global gathering of phone call logs and Internet data, including in China and Hong Kong, before his dramatic escape to Moscow where he remains holed up in an airport transit area.

“This is a spy movie that’s developing,” Lee said of his film which gets its title from the code name Snowden gave himself - Verax.