While Hong Kong residents spent two weeks obsessing over the whereabouts of Edward Snowden as he remained holed up in the city, a group of young filmmakers saw opportunity.  Working at lightning speed, four friends produced a short movie based on the National Security Agency leaker’s time in the city and the scramble to locate him.  The result is “Verax,” a five-minute film that imagines what might have happened as the CIA, China’s Ministry of State Security, and a Hong Kong reporter tried to track down Mr. Snowden, who declared on June 9 that he was the source of leaked documents disclosing sensitive details about the NSA’s surveillance programs.  The film, which gets its title from the codename Mr. Snowden used for himself, has gotten more than 5,000 views since it was posted on YouTube on Tuesday — two days after he departed Hong Kong on a flight to Moscow.  “We shot it very bare bones, with a guerrilla mentality,” says Edwin Lee, who spearheaded the project with the help of Jeff Floro, Shawn Tse and Marcus Tsui. All but Mr. Lee, who works as a cinematographer and editor, have day jobs outside the movie industry. (The four men are all expats living in Hong Kong, hailing from Ireland, the U.S., Canada and Australia.)  They called on assorted friends for the movie’s cast — with varying degrees of thespian abilities — but they struck gold with the actor they found to play the lead role: Andrew Cromeek, an American school teacher in Hong Kong and a dead ringer for Mr. Snowden.  “I went down my list of Caucasian friends,” says Mr. Tse, before stopping at Mr. Cromeek. All he needed was the right haircut and a wardrobe change.  The film is not quite a “Saturday Night Live”-style spoof, but neither is it a slick thriller given its cast of non-actors and micro budget.  “It was foot-on-the-gas filmmaking,” Mr. Lee says.  In some ways it resembles a modern Hong Kong crime drama, with its technical dialogue in sterile conference rooms, time-lapse photography, and sweeping aerial shots of the city’s famous skyline. (All photography is original except for two quick shots they bought from stock-footage Website Pond5.com.)  “It’s a docu-drama recreation,” Mr. Lee says.  But it also makes subtle observations about Hong Kong’s sometimes tense relationship with mainland China and the “one country, two systems” policy — underscored in a scene where a security official from China’s central government barks orders to Hong Kong police officers.  “Don’t we have a rendition treaty with the United States?” one officer asks. The terse response: “Let us handle that matter.”  Mr. Snowden may have been within Hong Kong’s borders, but it’s clear — in the film, at least — that China is pulling the strings.  Mr. Tse says they toyed with the idea of making their film a Jason Bourne-type thriller, a spoof, or an outright comedy. But ultimately they decided to make what they suppose might have happened as U.S. and Chinese intelligence officers try to zero in on Mr. Snowden. “We are trying to not be on anyone’s side,” he says.  Mr. Tsui describes it as “a snapshot in time,” as Hong Kongers speculated — at the workplace, bars and dinner tables — on Mr. Snowden’s fate.  The four film enthusiasts haven’t yet had time to add up all the costs, but they figure the budget came to roughly 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$641), a third of which went for a night’s stay at the Mira, the hotel where Mr. Snowden stayed for part of his time in Hong Kong and where the filmmakers shot some scenes.  They say their movie was mainly a labor of love and don’t expect to recoup their investment, a quaint notion in a city where making money is an obsession.  In fact, says Mr. Floro, “I’m losing money.”  Follow me on Twitter @NapolitanoWSJ
Step aside Superman--the summer's hottest movie may be online. Four Hong Kong filmmakers have rushed out a short film based on National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden’s time in their city. Watch the clip.