In post-pandemic Shanghai, 23-year-old Asher (Yvonne Shuyu Zhang) is preparing to leave the city and return to Los Angeles. On one of her last nights, she asks her hip-hop dance teacher, Tori (Shu-Yi), out for coffee. What begins as a casual outing transforms into something neither of them expected. They wander the streets of the former French Concession, share stories and laughter, sneak into a closed mall and slowly discover how much they have to offer each other, just as the clock runs out. By dawn, they must reckon with the bittersweet reality of a connection that arrived exactly one night too late.

Shot with a confident, unhurried intimacy, Ephemera is thoroughly in the tradition of Linklater's “Before” trilogy and Wong Kar-wai's city-as-feeling filmmaking, a comparison the film earns and, charmingly, even acknowledges. The two leads have magnetic chemistry, and their dialogue feels lived-in and unforced. Writer-director Shan Jiang finds something rare here: a queer love story that is tender without being precious and breezy without being slight. It moves with the energy of a city night that you never want to end and leaves exactly the kind of ache that the best romantic films do.—Jarod Neece