Oscar-winning Edward Snowden film awaits local release

Cinema-goers will see their city like never before when the Oscar-winning fly-on-the-wall documentary about Edward Snowden is shown in Hong Kong, after a local distributor confirmed it had acquired the film.

Director Laura Poitras revealed that more "extraordinary" footage - filmed in the summer of 2013 at the Mira Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui during the tense weeks that the US fugitive whistleblower was in Hong Kong - is yet to come.

"I do plan to release more footage from the Hong Kong shoot," Poitras said on Monday during an online Q&A via popular social media website Reddit, hours after accepting an Oscar for best documentary for Citizenfour, which debuted at the New York film festival in October.

She accepted her award on stage with reporter Glenn Greenwald and Snowden's long-term girlfriend Lindsay Mills.

"On the first day we met Ed, Glenn conducted a long interview [four to five hours] that is extraordinary. I also conducted a separate interview with Ed re: technical questions. The time constraints of a feature film made it impossible to include everything. I will release more."

Snowden, a former US government contractor, blew the whistle on mass cyber surveillance carried out by the US and its allies. He is living in Russia after being granted political asylum.