Katarina Zhu and Daisy Zhou on seeing and being seen in ‘Bunnylovr’

‘Bunnylovr’ is out in theaters today. Premiering at Sundance in January 2025 as part of the US Dramatic Competition, writer-director-star Katarina Zhu’s debut feature follows Becca, a Chinese-American cam girl in New York navigating a toxic relationship with a mysterious client while quietly trying to reconnect with her estranged, dying father.

This is our conversation with Katarina and her cinematographer Daisy Zhou, their first collaboration together. The admiration between them is palpable throughout, two people who clearly found something rare in each other on their first project. We open with how they connected and what drew each of them to the material, before getting into what it means to direct and perform simultaneously and how that shapes the set from both sides of the camera.

From there the conversation moves into the heart of the film: how Katarina built Becca as a character who moves between very private digital spaces and the more grounded textures of everyday life without ever splitting into two different people, and how Daisy translated those shifts into a visual language where each space carries its own feeling while still belonging to the same film.

(Photos: Courtesy of Katarina Zhu)