Echoes
Dir. Roku Long, Prod. Alexis Stodghill & Nina Cochran, USA, 2022, 15MIN
A harried mother of two boys must shut down her Chinese restaurant as Covid-19 begins to ravage New York City. In the last moments of her operation, an African-American delivery woman picks up her final order, only to face a financial loss when the order is canceled. This sparks a fast friendship as these women bond to escape their pandemic pressures through a very vocal TikTok trend.
Trailer from Echoes
Starring Edith Chi-Hua Lee, Shanon Harris
Director of Photography. Gianna Badiali
New York, New York, 2022
“Echoes holds a very special place in my heart — because it was made during the pandemic. As time goes by, especially after the pandemic, this film feels even more meaningful.
When COVID first broke out in 2019, I was living on the Upper West Side of New York, near Mount Sinai Hospital. It was a dark and heavy period — the city was shut down, and we all wore masks and gloves just to go out for groceries, keeping our distance from one another. Those months felt endlessly grey.
What kept me warm were the moments every evening when people across the city would clap and cheer for healthcare workers. Some banged pots and pans from their windows — that sound, echoing through the city, moved me deeply every single day.
In the fall of 2020, I was walking in Riverside Park when a gentleman passing by pointed at the geese flying south and said, “Look — if only humans could move together like that.” Around that time, the world felt full of noise and change — George Floyd’s death, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the sudden explosion of TikTok culture. While the pandemic was still ongoing, tension was everywhere. Many Chinatowns had closed down, countless restaurants shut their doors, and people were losing jobs.
My producer, Alexis, and I had so many conversations about what society was going through. And I started to wonder — why not tell a story just about this moment? About women, about the frustration, the release, the absurdity we were all living through — and somehow, tie it together with a silly TikTok trend. Echoes was born out of that moment.
Echoes was produced following all the COVID protocols."
