How Katarina Zhu Made The Year's Most Haunting Indie

There were a lot of unique films at this year’s 2025 Sundance Film Festival. In ByDesign, a woman swaps bodies with a chair. Another film centers around a “twin bereavement support group.” In Bunnylovr, the the protagonist is mailed a snow-white bunny as she cares for an aging parent and navigates private social alienation. With a buzzy debut at Sundance, Bunnylovr is well disposed to make waves on the 2025 festival circuit and eventually make its way into theaters.

Bunnylovr is written, directed, and starred in by Katarina Zhu, with a script largely drawn from her own experiences. As a cinematic debut, Katarina delivers an impressively subtle performance onscreen all the while crafting what results in a thoroughly confident first feature. A New York City-based rising star in the film world, Katarina’s unique voice will certainly make an imprint on contemporary cinema for years to come.

I spoke to Katarina after the festival, to catch up on how she’s feeling about Bunnylovr’s reception and her plans for the future.

LILY LADY: I was so drawn to Bunnylovr in part because your character is very dissociated in certain moments, and it's really hard to make a successful film with a leading character like that. What was it like for you to craft that character and still think of them as a star?

KATARINA ZHU: Well, first of all, thank you for saying that because I feel like some of the reviews [have said] something like, oh, this character feels inaccessible or there's something that's not allowing us to connect with her or she feels like distant or something. Probably that same thing that those viewers recognized as distance or a disconnect is something that you're picking up on. The people that get it, get it.

It's such a personal story. I was injecting my firsthand experiences into the script and trying to keep it as authentic and truthful as possible. It didn't really even occur to me that someone like that couldn’t be the protagonist.

LL: It feels like it came from a really organic place. One thing I responded to was that downtown New York is a character in itself. What is your experience of being in New York and making art about New York?

KZ: I grew up in the suburbs of New York. From my town, you could see the city in the distance. The city was a place I was always trying to get to and ultimately knew I would end up living in. The idea of New York has always been so romantic to me. Growing up, looking at it from afar, and also watching it in media, it always felt like this character. So I went to NYU and moved to Brooklyn after graduation.

There's nothing like making a film in the city. It feels like a rite of passage to make an indie, no-budget film in downtown New York. You can be so run-and-gun and not have to worry about permitting and the cops don't care at all. It was nice to be able to work that way, because we had to be so scrappy.

I also think a big part of shooting in downtown New York was shooting in Chinatown. I don't feel like I've seen Chinatown through this lens of a second-generation Chinese-American person. The character is experiencing it at a remove; she doesn't speak the language, but she has a tether to this community and it simultaneously makes her feel at home, but also weirdly alienated.

LL: In the Q&A after the Sundance screening, you talked about growing up very ‘online.’ Your character is a cam performer, having a transactional interaction with a client. But beyond that, it felt almost more like she was on Omegle or Chat Roulette. Cruising late at night, finding someone online that’s also feeling alone…What were your online experiences like as a younger person?

KZ: I had this era of almost internet addiction that coincided with my parents divorce in seventh or eighth grade. I was just left to my own devices, my grandparents were living with us and my grandmother was sick and there were all these other things that required my parents’ attention. I was so unsupervised, and would go for days in my bed online. And I wasn't feeling very fulfilled socially, so it really was the perfect storm.

I was obsessed with Twilight, I would read all this Twilight fan fiction. There was a point at which I felt like my life revolved around reading Twilight fan fiction. I would get notifications for new chapters…that was like my drug.

That obviously made me withdraw from my ‘real life’ in certain ways, but I felt so comforted by these online communities. Even if there weren’t direct connections, it was about just knowing that there were other people who similarly found comfort and entertainment in the same ways that I did.

LL: What's your relationship like now with the digital world?

KZ: I'm so much less online. But I definitely use it like everybody does, to self-soothe. When I got back from Sundance, I'd binge watched like 48 hours of content. But [being less online] is ultimately the arc of the protagonist, Rebecca, in the film.

LL: What are your hopes and aspirations for this next chapter with Bunnylovr?

KZ: Sundance was such a special, singular experience, and I'm so honored to have been a part of it. Now we're waiting to hear back from a couple other festivals. My dream is to have a really great New York premiere, because so many people who worked on the movie are here. It would be amazing to get theatrical distribution, but that’s sort of out of my hands.

LL: What are you planning for your next project?

KZ: The minute that I touched back down in New York City from Sundance, I was like, okay, it's back to writing mode. The industry has such a short attention span, so I have to capitalize on the moment. Obviously, I've been ‘introduced’ at this point. So there's interest, but it's not always going to be at the same level as it is right now.

So yeah, I’m working on a second feature and on a pilot. I’m excited to do something on a larger scale. I'm excited to do something with more resources. But I know that it will come with its own set of problems.

Bunnylovr was my first feature, and I had no expectations, which is so beautiful because I didn’t know what to be afraid of. With the second film, since I haven’t made a movie on a bigger scale, everything that comes my way will also be new.

LL: Last question, did you ever write any Twilight fan fiction?

KZ: I tried. I think I wrote maybe one paragraph and then I couldn't continue. Maybe it was some sort of self protection like, you don't want to be doing this. I couldn't take it there. I couldn't take myself there.

LL: That paragraph would make a great DVD extra.