Locally Filmed Short 'Lunchbox' Makes Streaming Debut

The Lunchbox film crew preps the football stadium scene at Mayfield High School. Credit: Quinton L. Jackson

Born and raised in Mayfield Heights, filmmaker and actor Anne Hu has just released her award-winning, locally filmed short film Lunchbox online with YouTube’s Omeleto and Taiwan Plus. The movie, which won Cleveland International Film Festival’s Best Ohio Short Film in 2023, has shown at 53 film festivals and won 20 awards worldwide. In addition to the U.S., it’s screened in Canada, France, South Korea and Germany. [page] Hu and her team filmed the movie in Lakewood, Nordonia, Mayfield Heights, Strongsville and Seven Hills.

“It’s been really incredible,” says Hu. “I don’t think when I set out to make this movie that I could have predicted or foreseen how it would be perceived. When I started it, it was and still is, first and foremost a love letter to my mother, who passed away when I was 20. That was the reason I wrote the script. I really felt it was a story that would resonate with many people. I’m so grateful it has.”

She says that filming in Cleveland and then screening and winning at the Cleveland International Film Festival was “an amazing homecoming” and a “cherry-on-top moment.”

At the CIFF screening, she says she felt there was a certain amount of pride she felt from the audience, which embraced the movie from the beginning.

Lunchbox screens for a packed house at the historic Cleveland Play House Theater at the Cleveland International Film Festival, winning Audience Choice for Best Ohio Short. Credit: Anne Hu

“We could not have made this film without the support of so many Cleveland communities,” she says. “The Cleveland Film Commission helped us a lot with finding locations and connecting us with local crew and resources. The Mayfield School District was incredible. The football field scenes were shot in Mayfield, where I went to school. We couldn’t have pulled off this film without them. The letterman jackets were lent to us from the Mayfield community and alumni. I actually put up a Facebook blast to my classmates and asked if they had their jackets. A lot them did. And then the Chinese Academy of Cleveland was integral too. Many of the props in the childhood kitchen scene were lent or donated by the staff and families from the Chinese Academy of Cleveland. It meant a lot to me to go back to Cleveland and shoot there. I am truly thankful to all the Cleveland communities who made this film possible.”

Before she even consciously realized it, Hu expressed an interest in film when she was a kid.

“I was always drawn to storytelling,” she says. “One of the things I did as a kid was write and illustrate storybooks for my classmates. This was in elementary school. Like second and third grade.”

In middle school, she began directing skits for her school’s events.

“I would write a skit and get my friends to act in them,” she says. “I was essentially directing them. I just didn’t know it. By the time high school came around, I was torn between fine art and film. I originally studied painting and drawing. After my first year of fine art, I realized that I think in terms of stories instead of single pictures. I realized that I wanted to be a filmmaker. I haven’t looked back.”

Anne Hu on set in 2011. Credit: Clifton Radford

In 2020, she made the Alice List of Emerging Female Filmmakers who Have Not Yet Directed a Feature, and she was accepted into Netflix’s Original Series Directors Development Program that same year. She also shadowed director Marc Webb on Netflix’s The Society.

“Shadowing Marc Webb was a huge moment,” she says. “It was amazing to see Marc work. He’s an incredibly gracious and kind man. I learned so much from him and the whole experience. It was the first time I saw a production of that scale and with studio funding. The Netflix Original Series Director Program was like a deep dive course on directing television. I’m really grateful for these experiences.”

The idea for Lunchbox came to her when she scrolled through her Facebook feed and came across a video called The Lunchbox Moment. It featured stories of Asian-Americans who were bullied for their homemade lunches. Those narratives sent her down memory lane, recalling her own painful memories of being teased for bringing her favorite home-cooked meal, zongzi, to school.

“This is rare — and I don’t usually work this way — but the first draft was literally written right after I watched that video,” she says. “It was something I needed to get out. From there, I worked on revising it and polishing it. What you see now in the final film is not too different. The three-chapter structure was in the original script. The changes made over the years were more fine-tuning. Structurally, the story didn’t change.”

Hu also stars in the movie and plays Shirley, the Taiwanese-American woman who uses her late immigrant mother’s recipe book to make zongzi, turnip cake, and hand-cut noodles. As she cooks, each dish evokes a childhood memory in which she grows progressively older and more distant from her culture and her mother.

Adult Shirley (played by Anne Hu) prepares a meal from her childhood. Credit: Quinton Jackson

The filmmaking process began back in 2017 when Hu wrote the script. The film wasn’t done until fall of 2022.

“I always say that making a film is a miracle,” she says. “There are so many moving parts and things can fall apart at any moment. We had a lot of challenges throughout that process. It took a long time to raise the funding. We wanted to shoot in 2020 but had to postpone a year because of the pandemic. I insisted on shooting in Cleveland. There were some producers I interviewed that wanted to shoot in New York, where I was based at the time. I wanted to shoot in Cleveland for the authenticity of the story and cast in Cleveland as well. A lot of the kids are cast in Cleveland. The ones that aren’t are still from the Ohio area. That was intentional. East Coast kids move and talk differently than Midwest kids. There are subtle differences. I wanted that specificity and authenticity in the film.”

Little Shirley (played by Audrey Liao) brings zongzi to school for lunch Credit: Production still from Lunchbox

For the girls that played the younger versions of Shirley, Hu cast non-actors. As a coincidence, both come from the Chinese Academy of Cleveland that Hu attended.

“That was not intentional. They just happened to be the best fit. I’m really proud of them. They did an amazing job,” says Hu.

At the moment, Hu is working on a feature-length screenplay.

“I have a horror comedy in the works,” she says. “It’s very different from Lunchbox. It’s still in the early stages, but I feel ready to make my first feature. That’s my next focus for the career.”

Lunchbox is available on YouTube’s Omeleto and on TaiwanPlus for a limited time.
For the latest on where to watch Lunchbox and to learn more about the film, please visit linktr.ee/lunchboxthefilm. For more about Hu, please go to linktr.ee/annehufilms.

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