There\u2019s a particular kind of filmmaker who makes their debut feature the way Katarina Zhu did, not because someone handed them the opportunity, but because they got tired of waiting for it. Zhu, an NYC-based writer, director, and actress, premiered her first feature Bunnylovr at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Now, over a year later, she\u2019s only just beginning to come up for air.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m only just sort of coming down off of the whole experience,\u201d she says, laughing a little at herself. \u201cThere were a couple of other festivals in Europe \u2014 I did a little festival tour all last year,\u201d she adds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bunnylovr, which hit theaters April 10, 2026 via Utopia, is the kind of film that stays with you in the same slow, creeping way its protagonist Rebecca drifts through her own life. The film follows a Chinese-American cam girl navigating a toxic relationship with an increasingly obsessive client while trying to reconnect with her estranged, dying father. It\u2019s a quiet, intimate, and deeply observant debut.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t a light lift, and Zhu didn\u2019t make it any easier for herself by starring in, writing, and directing it. The urge to take on all three roles stemmed from a hunger for creative control. \u201cThe autonomy you have over your own creative life as a director and a writer is so amazing,\u201d she says. \u201cI had never booked anything, so being able to give myself this role and take control over my career in that way was my favorite part of doing all three.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taking on so many responsibilities seems like a lot for a debut feature, but the multihyphenate credits the team around her, including her DP and producers, for making it feel manageable. \u201cHaving a DP who I trusted with my life really made my job so much easier,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Bunnylovr didn\u2019t happen overnight. Zhu lived with the script alone for about two to three years before she let anyone else read it. \u201cI think I was scared to make the jump from shorts to features,\u201d she admits. \u201cIt felt really daunting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The person who finally nudged her to make the jump was her close friend from NYU, Rachel Sennott, who would later co-star in the film. \u201cRachel was sort of like, you should just make the feature. Just do it,\u201d Zhu recalls. \u201cOne of her love languages is talking out life goals and career goals with you as a friend.\u201d Having someone in her corner who had already navigated that leap made it feel, in retrospect, much less scary than it seemed. \u201cWith hindsight, I can see that the jump from short to feature \u2014 it\u2019s actually not that big.\u201d<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s one thing Zhu is certain of, it\u2019s that she couldn\u2019t have made this film without the community she built at NYU and carried into the industry. \u201cCommunity, especially in the indie filmmaking scene, is everything,\u201d she says. \u201cIndie filmmaking revolves around, exists on, community.\u201d Friends from school came on as her cast and crew, not just as a job, but because they believed in what she was making. \u201cThey wanted to support me, and that was so huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sense of collective investment shaped the entire production experience. \u201cIt\u2019s also the reason why I\u2019m drawn to filmmaking in the first place, because of this community that gets built around achieving a singular goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Filming in Chinatown was important to Zhu in a way that went beyond location scouting. The neighborhood holds a complicated place in Zhu\u2019s sense of identity, a place she wanted to portray on screen with real honesty. \u201cWhen I\u2019m walking around Chinatown, I have this inherent sense of belonging, because I\u2019m surrounded by people who look like me,\u201d she explains. \u201cBut then at the same time, if we try and speak to each other, sometimes we don\u2019t even speak the same language.\u201d That push-and-pull feeling of alienation and belonging in the same space is carefully woven into the fabric of the film.<\/p>\n
This nuance extends to how she thinks about representation in film more broadly. Growing up, Zhu rarely saw young Asian American women portrayed in ways that felt layered or real. \u201cIt was rare to see myself in film,\u201d she said simply. \u201cAnd so it was really important to me to portray that.\u201d In Bunnylovr, Zhu puts a young Asian American woman on screen in a way that feels genuinely lived-in.<\/p>\n
Zhu deliberately kept the film grounded. In tackling internet culture, specifically cam work, online relationships, and screen-driven loneliness, she was careful not to let the tech aspects of the film feel gimmicky. She filmed computer screens practically and steered clear of visual effects, avoiding anything that might feel trendy or overly stylized. \u201cMy hope is that you would be able to watch this in 10 years and not feel like it\u2019s too dated,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As Zhu\u2019s first feature, Bunnylovr feels less like a first attempt and more like the beginning of something sustained.<\/p>\n
Bunnylovr is now playing at the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village and will be available on TVOD beginning May 19th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a particular kind of filmmaker who makes their debut feature the way Katarina Zhu did, not because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[78896,78897,35501,9,11,10,35325],"class_list":["post-197891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-bunnylovr","tag-katarina-zhu","tag-movie","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-sundance-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}