Institute History
Description
A drifting Chinese American cam girl struggles to navigate an increasingly toxic relationship with one of her clients while rekindling her relationship with her dying estranged father.
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.—Matt Cornell
Available in person. Also available online for the public (January 30–February 2) and credentialed press and industry (January 29–February 2).
Screenings include closed and open captions.