Sundance-premiering “Run Amok” is an expressive, unconventional take on today’s teen experience, replete with musical numbers. When cinematographer Shachar Langlev with director NB Mager embarked on the independent film, their goal was to place real power and confidence in not just the teenage characters, but the actors who played them as well. To help achieve a visual language as layered and precise as its subject matter, Langlev chose Zeiss Supreme Primes with Alexa Mini LF.
In “Run Amok”, Meg, a lonely teenage girl, channels grief and activism into an elaborate musical about a shooting that occurred at her high school. The film, written and directed by NB Mager and produced by Tandem Pictures (Julie Christeas), stars a new face, Alyssa Marvin, alongside an all-star ensemble including Patrick Wilson, Margaret Cho, Sophia Torres, Elizabeth Marvel, and Molly Ringwald. Throughout the film there is a delineation between the youth and the adults, with the literal standoff extending to the cinematography choices that separate the two generations.
For Langlev, the visual approach was inseparable from the film’s emotional core. Working with two Mini LF camera bodies across only 22 shoot days, consistency was non-negotiable. He turned to Zeiss Supreme Prime lenses—relying on the 135mm for close-ups and the 21mm and 35mm for wider coverage—trusting the Supreme’s uniform look, weight, diameter, and T-stop across the set to keep coherence within every scene.
This choice digs deeper than just reliability. “What I love about the Zeiss Supreme lens is how they deal with what’s not in focus,” Langlev elaborates. “The Zeiss Supreme has a supreme fall-off. It’s just organic.” In a film built around the push and pull between teenagers and adults, where camera position and focus plane were deliberate storytelling tools, that organic quality was key. “Cinema is a two-dimensional world, but we shoot to look and feel three-dimensional. The balance of what is in focus lets us achieve this.”
After premiering at Sundance 2026 in the US Narrative Competition, Run Amok continues its festival run. To watch Langlev’s full Zeiss Conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-QlFoOkUx0
“Run Amok” will be screening at the opening night of the Lower East Side Film Festival on April 30. For more information: https://www.lesfilmfestival.com/program/opening-night-film-2026
