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Producer Ani Schroeter (Bunnylovr) attended the 2025 Cannes Film Festival as The Gotham Cannes Producers Network Fellow. Below find her wrap on the festival and her experiences at the Producers Network. I feel like I’m coming down from my first week as a high school freshman. The Cannes Film Festival was daunting, invigorating and I cannot wait to go back. While at most U.S. festivals, running into film friends on the street is the norm, at Cannes, they are few and far between. At least for a newbie like me. This was my first year at Cannes, and I am […]

The post Rosé, Learning about Co-Productions and a Charli Xcx DJ Set: Ani Schroeter’s Cannes Producer Network Diary first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Producer Ani Schroeter (Bunnylovr) attended the 2025 Cannes Film Festival as The Gotham Cannes Producers Network Fellow. Below find her wrap on the festival and her experiences at the Producers Network. I feel like I’m coming down from my first week as a high school freshman. The Cannes Film Festival was daunting, invigorating and I cannot wait to go back. While at most U.S. festivals, running into film friends on the street is the norm, at Cannes, they are few and far between. At least for a newbie like me. This was my first year at Cannes, and I am […]

The post Rosé, Learning about Co-Productions and a Charli Xcx DJ Set: Ani Schroeter’s Cannes Producer Network Diary first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Exclusive: The Gotham Film & Media Institute has named the seven fellows set for the 2025 edition of its Festival De Cannes Producers Network Program. They are Caroline Clark (The Wedding Banquet), Chester Algernal Gordon (The Inspection), Dan Kagan (Longlegs), Leslie Norville (The First Wave), Joe Pirro (We Grown Now), Ani Schroeter (This Closeness), and Daniel Tantalean (In the Summers).

As the sole U.S. Partner Organization for the Festival de Cannes Producers Network, a program taking place in person at Cannes this year from May 14-19, The Gotham annually selects U.S. fiction and nonfiction producers to participate. Running concurrently with the Cannes Film Festival and the Marche du Film, the program is specifically designed for experienced producers to build up their international networks and learn more about international production, financing, legal and packaging.

In tandem with its work on the program, The Gotham supports Gotham Edu partners Colgate University...

Writer, director and star Katarina Zhu’s feature debut is a personal portrait of fulfillment, bringing a nuanced perspective to universal themes of daddy issues, privilege and self-love.

In Bunnylovr, Zhu plays Becca, a twentysomething Chinese American who struggles through life in New York City while moonlighting as a cam girl. Her life takes a turn when a persistent client sends her a live bunny, whom she names Milk. Meanwhile, she runs into her estranged, dying father on the street.

Being fetishized and objectified by everyone in her life quickly takes a toll on Becca. She’s her father William’s (Perry Yung) lucky charm, helping him count cards in the park; she’s her best friend Bella’s (Rachel Sennott) muse, even though the artist ultimately makes her feel violated with her “feminist” creative license; her ex Carter (Jack Kilmer) strings her along as she struggles to move on...

Our first glimpse at 2025 independent cinema has arrived with the unveiling of next month’s Sundance Film Festival, taking place January 23–February 2, 2025, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, with all of the competition films and more available online from January 30–February 2, 2025 across the country.

Curated from 15,775 submissions from 156 countries or territories, including 4,138 feature-length films, the 87 selected feature-length films include Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet; Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall; Amalia Ulman’s El Planeta follow-up Magic Farm starring Chloë Sevigny and Alex Wolff; the Josh O’Connor-led Rebuilding, from A Love Song director Max Walker-Silverman; Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You with Rose Byrne, A$AP Rocky, and Conan O’Brien; the Isabelle Huppert-led Luz; Love, Brooklyn starring André Holland; Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius); Elegance Bratton...

The 2025 line-up for the Sundance Film Festival has been announced.

This year’s fest features the latest projects from Oscar winners, studio filmmakers, and indie stalwarts like Justin Lin, Ira Sachs, Barry Levinson, and Questlove while the U.S. Dramatic Competition section is made of selections from directors new to the Park City fest.

“The combination of these new voices and some of these filmmakers who might be more household names, speaks to the the power of independent cinema and how, no matter where you are in your career, you are drawn to this community that Sundance has helped build over the years,” Sundance director of programming Kim Yutani told The Hollywood Reporter. Of the 87 feature films announced thus far, 36 titles (41 percent) are directed by first-time feature film directors.

Across the line-up, talents like Jennifer Lopez, Dev Patel, Bowen Yang, Chloë Sevigny, Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Ayo Edebiri star in fest films,...

The Sundance Film Festival is still deliberating about where to move in 2027, but in the meantime, the 2025 festival will go on in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. On Wednesday, the festival announced its Features and Episodic lineup, with a rich selection of independent projects that feature a lot of big names.

Katarina Zhu‘s feature debut Bunnylovr has according to Deadline wrapped up production (they were shotting in NYC) – we learn that the drama heading to next month’s American Film Festival’s 2024 edition of the US in Progress stars Austin Amelio, Perry Yung, Rachel Sennott, Jack Kilmer and Zhu herself. Bunnylovr was produced by Zhu alongside Fair Oaks Entertainment producers Rachel Sennott and Roger Mancusi with Ani Schroeter. Rhianon Jones and Tristan Scott-Behrends also produced for Neon Heart Productions, which financed the film alongside Radish, Phiphen Pictures, and Rna Pictures.

This tells the story of Rebecca (Zhu), a Chinese-American cam girl who struggles to navigate an increasingly toxic relationship with one of her clients while rekindling her relationship with her estranged, dying father.…...

Exclusive: Newcomer Katarina Zhu has wrapped filming in New York on Bunnylovr, an indie drama that she wrote, directed, and stars in.

Supporting cast includes Austin Amelio, Perry Yung (John Wick: Chapter 2), Rachel Sennott (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Jack Kilmer (Lords Of Chaos) and Clara Wong (Billions).

The film was recently selected to take part in Poland’s upcoming American Film Festival industry sidebar, U.S. in Progress. It’ll be hoping to follow in the footsteps of titles such as India Donaldson’s Good One, which won the top prize at the event last year before making its way to premieres at Sundance and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

Bunnylovr tells the story of Rebecca (Zhu), a Chinese-American cam girl who struggles to navigate an increasingly toxic relationship with one of her clients while rekindling her relationship with her estranged, dying father.

The film was developed...

Kit Zauhar’s sophomore feature “This Closeness” follows the promise of her 2021 debut “Actual People,” which demonstrated she could tell an immersive story with few resources. Her microbudget feature “This Closeness,” a Narrative Spotlight premiere of SXSW 2023, is now about to open from Factory 25 on June 7, followed by a Mubi streaming premiere on July 3. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.

Per IndieWire’s 2023 SXSW preview, “This Closeness” “wields its lo-fi constraints with tremendous sophistication and insight. The entire story takes place within the constraints of a Philadelphia apartment, booked by a young couple (Zauhar and Zane Pais) for a high school reunion weekend; once there, they find themselves dealing with the awkward loner (Ian Edlund) who lives there. As tensions mount, the movie dances an elegant line between cringe-comedy and erotic thriller, with Zauhar’s character, an Asmr YouTuber, developing an enigmatic bond with their temporary roommate while...

Exclusive: Brooklyn-based indie film distribution and production company Factory 25 has acquired North American theatrical rights on writer-director Kit Zauhar’s sophomore feature This Closeness, which debuted at SXSW 2023.

The film will begin its theatrical run at the IFC Center in New York City on June 7, with further engagements and a worldwide digital release on Mubi on July 3.

The film stars Zane Pais (Margot At The Wedding) and Ian Edlund with Zauhar also starring as she did on her first feature Actual People, which debuted at Locarno in 2021. Factory 25 also released that film. Actress and singer Jessie Pinnick (Princess Cyd) and multimedia artist Kate Williams round out the cast.

Following SXSW, This Closeness screened at the Philadelphia Film Festival, the Champs-Élysées Film Festival, and the Seattle International Film Festival, where it received a special jury mention for best ensemble cast in the New American Cinema Competition.

This Closeness is produced...

Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane are starring in “Between the Temples,” a new film from writer and director Nathan Silver that’s being described as “an anxious comedy.” It’s the story of a cantor who is locked in a crisis of faith and finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher re-enters his life as his new adult Bat Mitzvah student.

The supporting cast for this humorous exercise in neurosis boasts Dolly De Leon, who was just nominated for her scene-stealing work in “Triangle of Sadness.” Other ensemble members include Screen Actors Guild award-winner Caroline Aaron (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), longtime funnyman Robert Smigel (SNL’s “TV Funhouse”), stage and screen actress Madeline Weinstein (“Beach Rats”) and indie film regular Matthew Shear (“Mistress America”).

Principal photography wrapped in Kingston, N.Y., on the film. CAA Media Finance is handling domestic sales.

“Between the Temples” was...