Foreign Cop

It’s 1980. Macau is a post-modern, east meets west wonderland under the Portuguese administration. Gangsters, cabaret dancers, and slot machines coexist in an exciting atmosphere of neon lights, kitsch architecture and early consumer electronics.

Hired by a casino tycoon, private investigator Mendonza is the new guy in town. His goal is to catch the robbers that dared to pull off the biggest heist in the city’s memory, brutally killing a loyal casino employee.

Maria, a fierce Macanese lawyer, is Mendonza’s gate into this obscure town where silence speaks louder than words. Recently divorced because of the death of his son, Mendonza has nothing to lose in this investigation and ultimately finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.

  • Max Bessmertny
    Writer
    The Violin Case, Tricycle Thief, The Handover, Dirty Laundry, Sampan
  • Jorge Cordeiro dos Santos
    Writer
    The Violin Case, The Handover
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay
  • Genres:
    Thriller, Mystery, Detective, Neo Noir
  • Number of Pages:
    146
  • Country of Origin:
    Macao
  • Language:
    English, Portuguese, Yue Chinese (Cantonese)
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Torino Film Lab
    Torino, Italy
    November 1, 2019
Writer Biography - Max Bessmertny, Jorge Cordeiro dos Santos

Max and Jorge started collaborating at the beginning of 2019. Both wrote “The Handover”, a short comedy which premiered in Macau to rapturous audiences and The Violin Case (Max's directorial debut feature). Their screenplay for Foreign Cop was selected by the Torino Film Lab Extended programme, the film market at International Film Festival and Awards Macau, and Marché du Film at Cannes 2020.

Max Bessmertny is a writer-director and producer based in Southeast Asia. Max completed his debut feature film, "The Violin Case" with very little resources when the city in which he shot, Macao, was still under lockdowns due to the ongoing pandemic. The film was shot over the course of 21 nights and follows a struggling artist on a one night odyssey to locate his artwork accidentally forgotten in a taxi. He has written and directed more than ten short films (completed), and seven feature films. He is a masters graduate of the prestigious NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Jorge is an architect who was born and raised in Lisbon and has been living in Macau for more than a decade. He graduated in architecture and studied screenwriting in New York. He spends his days either assisting on the design of buildings, or managing his production company Gremlin Films.

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Writer Statement

The idea for this feature film came as Max wanted to develop some of the ideas and elements from his award winning short film Tricycle Thief (Toronto 2014).

It deals with a Portuguese private detective called Mendoza who is hired to investigate a robbery and murder in a casino in Macau. But nobody trusts him, everyone is suspicious of him and he doesn’t speak the local languages. That is until he meets a woman who speaks these languages and shares his love for classical music.

The investigation keeps going, and Mendonza discovers that a rickshaw driver named Ah Leong may have been involved in the murder. But Ah Leong is murdered, and so Mendoza keeps digging and finds out about a psychotic couple named Chang and Jolene, who were behind the robbery. But when those robbers are also found dead, Mendonza realizes that sometime dark and sinister is going on and that perhaps he is simply a pawn in a bigger game. But just before he decides to give up, he discovers that Ah Leong, the murdered rickshaw driver has left a kid behind. With no one to take care of him, Mendonza’s return home might have to be delayed and perhaps his return home is not going to happen after all.

One of the reasons to tell this story is the fish out of water element. Both myself and Jorge as writers are not from Macau, but I grew up here and it became my home. For Jorge, it’s the fact that Macau has been changing so much in the last decade “I want to remind audiences that there was once a whole different world. Probably a very imperfect one, but one that helped us understand where we are today.” This screenplay being a thriller with different characters from different backgrounds, is an opportunity and responsibility to paint a portrait of a lost era wrapped in a very entertaining way.