Empire Hotel

Maria's home has always been the Empire Hotel, in the traditional neighbourhood of Macao, where clothes hang between neon lights, and an entangled net of electric wires takes over streets flooded with vapour.

With her ageing father, the burden of keeping the decrepit hotel running stands on her shoulders. She sings Fado in a casino where gambling and prostitution go hand in hand, but money is scarce and real estate speculators become insistent. That is when Chu arrives, a mysterious young man with an obsessive interest in Maria.

Disillusioned dreams, greed and decadence: a chronicle of Macao today, 20 years after it's return to China.