2026 Sarasota Film Festival
Bunnylovr
Screenings
- 📅
Thursday, April 16 at 4:00 PM EDT
Ends 6:00 PM EDT
📍New College of Florida/Sainer Pavilion
5313 Bay Shore Rd, Sarasota, FL, 34243
About this film
In her debut feature, writer-director and star Katarina Zhu crafts a sensitive portrait of Rebecca (Zhu), a rootless online sex worker whose yearning for connection collides with her vigilance for maintaining emotional and physical safety. Rebecca’s unexpected reunion with her father, William (Perry Yung), is bittersweet, with his illness giving them little time to repair before she loses him again. Zhu’s nuanced, nonjudgmental approach to sex work and her vulnerable performance ground Bunnylovr’s vision of a precarious social world, in which intimacy is mediated and commodified, and family is fragmented across blood relations and chosen bonds. Fellow NYU Tisch alum and co-producer Rachel Sennott is abrasively funny as Rebecca’s more grounded BFF, while Austin Amelio is both alluring and unsettling as her mysterious online admirer.
Credits
- Director
- Katarina Zhu
- Producer
- Rachel Sennott, Katarina Zhu, Roger Mancusi, Ani Schroeter, Rhianon Jones, Tristan Scott-Behrends
- Executive Producer
- Deb Tam, James Graham, Tony Yang, Remi Alfallah, Sean O. McGuiness, Molly Conners, Amanda Bowers, Linda L. Berthy, Jane Sinisi, Topher Lin, Yao King
- Co-Producer
- Gia Rigoli, Aaron Keteyian, Logan Skole
- Screenwriter
- Katarina Zhu
- Cinematographer
- Daisy Zhou
- Editor
- Stephania Dulowski
- Composer
- Eli Keszler
- Sound Design
- Andres E. Marthe Gonzalez
- Production Design
- Carol Kim
- Cast
- Katarina Zhu, Austin Amelio, Perry Yung

