2026 RIIFF Filmmaker Spotlight Series: A Flash and How It Lasts, written and directed by Zhihao Hu
Article Written By Roman Olavarria
Zhihao Hu’s A Flash and How It Lasts is a quiet and observational piece that focuses on the relationship between a son, Jun, and his father flying in from China and visiting him in Los Angeles. Jun finds himself and his father unable to connect at a deeper level due to their ignorance in knowing how to communicate with one another. Their experience, age, and lived realities all work to widen the gap between them, but the father, breaking the stereotypical queer trope of a loudly unapproving parent, remains unantagonizing. The understanding of each other remains in the tenderness that they cultivate through action and the words that remain unspoken, as the script is carefully desolate of dialogue but is full of complex emotions and silence. Whether or not a true resolution were to occur between Jun and his father, Hu is able to reflect on the construction of this relationship through the use of varied cinematography and a true understanding of his characters.
Roman Olavarria: What do you think exists in the silence between any two people who are supposed to be close? How does A Flash and How It Lasts show this silence?
Zhihao Hu: Silence here is a complicated thing. When two people care about each other too much, they start weighing every word, and in the end they say nothing at all. In A Flash and How It Lasts, this silence of care also reveals how these two men used to communicate: they must have fought and hurt each other with words before, so now they guard their words to protect the relationship, each in his own way.
RO: The interactions of diaspora and multi-generational experiences can be nuanced and personal. How does A Flash and How It Lasts balance a personal story between a father and his son and the larger context of intergenerational differences caused by social and technological change?
ZH: I believe some personal moments can be universally understood, and the (dis)connection in this fraught father-son relationship is one of them. Because the characters are grounded in real people, their actions are driven by these contemporary conditions. The son has developed his own individuality — the pierced ear, the tattoos — while the father turns out to be more accepting than the son expects. The father believes in traditional Chinese medicine; the son has his own way of treating the same problem.
I don’t see this difference as antagonistic: the two can coexist. That’s why there is no antagonist in this story — the father is not a villain, and the son is not an angsty rebel. They can still care for each other while the difference remains. In fact, the care feels more powerful because the difference is there.
RO: What was the process like in casting Shane P. Zhang and Xiaoxiao Sun for their characters in the film? How did you help them develop the necessary connection to depict the complicated relationship that the two had?
ZH: The talent pool in LA isn’t large when it comes to male actors who speak fluent Mandarin. A friend of mine, a director I admire, had worked with Mr. Zhang before, and I was deeply moved by his performance in that film. I had him in mind even while I was writing the script. Once he read it, he came on board very quickly. We had a few heartfelt conversations about fathers and sons — I shared my own story with him, and we bonded over those moments. Mr. Sun came all the way from New York. The two actors met for the first time shortly before we started shooting, so a lot of the work was about giving them a shared history to stand on.
In some ways the film could absorb a certain distance between them. These two characters have not lived in the same room for years; they don’t quite know how to be around each other. So part of my job was less about manufacturing intimacy than about deciding which awkwardness to keep in frame.
RO: Were there any scenes in this film that you struggled with planning, filming, or editing? Were there any scenes that you thought were a struggle for the team?
ZH: The farewell scene shot through the car windshield was harder than it looks. It was a oner, and we chose to shoot through the glass to create a sense of distance, which left us very few angles for coverage. I believed the scene would be stronger if we stayed in one long take, so there wasn’t much of a safety net. It was stressful, but both actors did an amazing job carrying the whole scene.
RO: The cinematography often plays around with distance: the opening airport scene, the stroll along the streets, the close-ups when the father suggests a shave, etc.. How do these choices of distance and closeness depict the relationship between the two? What other cinematographic elements help showcase their relationship?
ZH: The relationship is always complicated in terms of closeness and distance—there is closeness within distance—so we looked for elements that could echo that: shooting through glass, soft focus, a reflection on a tabletop. And because this is a quiet story, the images needed to be interesting to look at and carry their own aesthetic weight. For the shaving scene, I wanted to explore how closeness between men can be represented on screen. Shaving is usually seen as a masculine activity, but it also involves privacy and vulnerability. That’s why I chose that action specifically, and shot it in a moving extreme close-up—I wanted to sit inside a pure moment of intimacy between two men.
RO: What have been some of the most pivotal experiences so far for you as a filmmaker and why? What personal experiences make up your largest influences regarding your work in film?
ZH: The largest personal influence behind this film is a single night. In the summer of 2024 I went home to China after almost three years away, and brought my father an electric shaver as a gift. He tried to persuade me to use one too, and then he took my hand, put the shaver against my face, and started trimming for me. I was startled by how intimate it was. My father had been a harsh man, hard to satisfy, and that night was the first time I felt tenderness from him. I still can’t tell whether he had changed or I had. Most of that summer was silence—him watching short videos in the living room, me writing in the bedroom—and somehow I felt closer to him inside that distance than I had in years. That is the belief this film is built on: connection can form exactly where two people recognize each other’s disconnection.
Later, at an internal screening, a friend told me that someone in the audience had felt connected to the film—it reminded her of her own father. That was the moment I felt rewarded. A film this personal, one we spent so long working on, had finally reached someone and made that connection on its own.
RO: Do you have a favorite moment or line in the film? What makes it your favorite?
ZH: My favorite is the walk-and-talk. Almost everything in it is in the nuance—there’s awkwardness, there’s deflection, there’s a bit of going through the motions, and there’s a lot of wishful thinking on both sides. But underneath every clumsy exchange is an attempt to look after the other person. And whatever they fail to say, they keep walking forward, side by side, at the same pace. That, to me, is what an ideal father-son relationship looks like: not perfect understanding, but still moving in the same direction.
RO: What are some projects that you have coming up? Anything that you are particularly
excited about?
ZH: I’m moving to New York to attend Columbia University’s Screenwriting and Directing MFA. It will give me the chance to refine my craft and to write and direct more films. I’m looking forward to the journey, and I hope to bring future work back to Providence.
