Project Progress

✅ Aug–Oct 2022 Completed the first major filming phase: full documentation of the 1,200 km pilgrimage walk on foot.

✅ 2024–2025 Multiple return visits to Shikoku for additional filming and continued engagement with local residents encountered along the route.

✅ 2025 Began establishing connections with major international documentary platforms and film festivals.

📌 Mar–Apr 2026 Completion of the first rough cut.

📌 May–Jul 2026 Final filming phase, including return visits with local participants and landscape / observational footage.

📌 Aug 2026 Completion of the second rough cut.

📌 Sep 2026 Picture lock and fine edit.

📌 Oct 2026 Final cut completed.

📌 Nov–Dec 2026 Post-production: sound design, music, and color grading.
Project completion.

Use of Funds

The film completed its first major filming phase between August and October 2022, documenting the full 1,200 km pilgrimage walk. This material currently makes up approximately 70% of the film.

Between 2024 and 2025, the team returned to Shikoku multiple times to continue filming, focusing on people encountered along the route and the passage of time since the original journey.

The final filming phase is planned for spring–summer 2026.
A portion of the funds raised through this campaign will be used to support this final round offilm shooting.

At the same time, we plan to complete the first rough cut in spring 2026. Another portion of the funds will be allocated to thepost production aiming to finish the 1st rough cut andto develop the film’s narrative structure at this crucial stage.

Post-production & Distribution Plan

In the beginning of 2026, the film will enter post-production, including rough cuts, final cut, sound design, music, and color grading.

In parallel, we are actively maintaining connections with international documentary platforms and film festivals, including Tokyo Docs (Japan) and Doc Edge (New Zealand), with the aim of bringing the film to a wider international audience.

These steps will move forward progressively as further funding becomes available.

Transparency & Updates

All funds raised through this campaign will be used exclusively for the production of the film and not for personal expenses.

We are committed to transparency and will provide regular email updates to supporters, including progress reports and information on how the funds are being used.

Budget Breakdown (Expandable Summary)

Total Goal: USD 27,632 

This campaign supports the final round of filming and the first full rough cut of Zero, A Pilgrimage to the Self.

How the funds will be used:

• Travel & Accommodation – USD 6,510 
  Flights, lodging, transportation, and meals for final filming in Shikoku
• Crew Costs – USD 9,425 
  Cinematographer and drone operator (director & producer are unpaid)
• Filming Equipment – USD 2,465 
  Camera, sound equipment, and DIT support
• Production Expenses – USD 1,247
  Fuel, tolls, parking, participant gifts, communication
• Rough Cut Editing – USD 7,250 
  Editor fees and editing setup for the first full cut
• Contingency – USD 725 
  For unforeseen production needs

Every contribution goes directly toward completing the final filming and shaping the first full version of the film.

Risks & Challenges

This is a documentary filmed over many years, and its greatest challenge is time itself.

Many of the people who appear in the film are elderly. Over the past few years, some have already passed away, and their images and voices can no longer be re-recorded or revisited.

In addition, long-term, cross-border filming and an independently driven production place ongoing demands on time, energy, and resources.

Precisely because of these irreversible changes, this film needs to be completed now.

What This Film Is About

 ZERO, A Pilgrimage to the Self is a documentary film about walking, encounters, and time.

 The film opens with an unexpected yet gentle moment: inside a Japanese temple, monks are setting up lights and cameras. When a visitor asks what they are preparing for, a monk explains that the equipment allows people to join daily chanting online.

This simple exchange becomes the film’s point of entry.

 The story then turns to the director herself, a filmmaker and travel writer whose work and life have unfolded across different countries. During the COVID pandemic, as borders closed and the world came to a standstill, she travels alone to Japan’s Shikoku Island and begins a 1,200 kilometer pilgrimage on foot. The film observes her preparations, her solitary days on the road, and the lived experience of walking this ancient route during an unprecedented global pause.

The 1,200 kilometer walk forms the film’s central narrative. What begins with curiosity and a sense of novelty gradually gives way to physical exhaustion, doubt, and long stretches of silence. The camera stays close to the body and the road, moving through summer heat, temples, and cemeteries, recording the subtle changes that emerge through daily repetition. Reflections on life are not introduced as themes, but emerge naturally through continued movement.

Alongside this journey, a second timeline slowly unfolds: a series of return visits since the initial pilgrimage. The director comes back to Shikoku to revisit people she met during the pilgrimage, spending time with them and walking parts of the route together. Many of them are elderly locals who have quietly maintained and cared for the pilgrimage path for decades. Their daily lives and circumstances reveal another face of this road.

One of these stories centers on Takahara, now in her eighties, who ran a pilgrimguest house along the route for fifteen years. In the summer of 2025, the director accompanies her on a drive to Cape Ashizuri, the southernmost point of Shikoku, as a farewell journey. Takahara is preparing to leave Shikoku—where she has lived for many years—and return to Sendai for retirement. Shortly before the trip, she learns that a close friend she once met in Ashizuri passed away just a month earlier, at over one hundred years old. This shared journey transforms the act of “returning” from a repetition of place into an encounter with a new stage of life.

Through these return visits, the film also encounters others who continue to live along the path: the Irie couple (Mr. Irie passed away during Covid), who run the pilgrim lodge Utangura; Mr. Manabe, head priest of Dainichi-ji Temple (Temple No. 4), and moments of rest to those walking the pilgrimage.

 By weaving together the solitary walk during the pandemic and the later return visits, the film portrays a pilgrimage route that continues to be walked and cared for, while tracing how an individual, in midlife, navigates uncertainty through movement, connection, and repeated acts of farewell.

Story Background

More than a decade ago, I was first drawn to the story of Kūkai, a Japanese monk who traveled to Tang Dynasty China. Although his time there was brief, he brought back esoteric Buddhist teachings, scriptures, and artistic traditions that continue to shape Japanese culture today. This history stayed with me for years.

In the summer of 2022, as the pandemic still overshadowed the world, borders were closed and human connection felt nearly severed. By chance, I traveled alone to Shikoku. With almost no tourists on the island, I began walking the full 1,200 kilometer pilgrimage route.

The journey started in the intense heat of mid-summer and continued into the early autumn of October. At first, the footage I recorded was entirely private, documenting my physical condition, emotional shifts, and the challenges that surfaced through prolonged solitude.

But my journey did not truly end whenthe walk was completed.

The following year, despite having no formal religious background, I moved to Kōyasan, one of Japan’s most important Buddhist centers and a place deeply connected to Kūkai and the esoteric traditions he introduced. Life and filmmaking continued to unfold there.

In early 2025, during a conversation with a senior Japanese documentary filmmaker who had worked on NHK’s The Silk Road series in the 1980s, he asked me a simple question:

Who We Are

Director BUNI Bayan

BUNI Bayan began her career with international co-production features and Chinese films shot overseas, including The Children of Huang Shi (starring Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh), Sophie’s Revenge (starring Zhang Ziyi), and The Meg (starring Jason Statham). She later expanded into documentaries as a producer, collaborating with Intel on the large-scale documentary Hello AI, and also published travel books in China and Taiwan while working with Lonely Planet as writer and commissioning editor.

Producer Julia CHENG

Julia Cheng, Producer, is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her directorial debut film Cricket Liu won Best International Short Documentary at American Documentary Film Festival 2019.

In the past years, she has mainly worked as a producer with top Chinese documentary filmmakers on several feature length films, including City Dream directed by Weijun Chen (previous works incl. "Please Vote For Me"), which premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival; The Invisible Shore directed by Qi Zhao (previous works incl. Last Train Home, The Chinese Mayor), which was an Official Selection by DOC NYC 2021.

About The Pilgrims’ Voices Project

Before the film enters its final editing stage, selected supporters will receive a set of reflective questions.
Participants may respond via audio or video, sharing their thoughts on walking, loss, farewell, and their personal connection to pilgrimage.

Selected responses may be integrated into the film or related visual works becoming part of the film’s living echo.