Langlev Takes Run Amok to Sundance with Zeiss Supreme Primes

A camera operator films a scene using a professional camera setup equipped with ZEISS lenses in a studio environment.

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 ARRI Alexa Mini.

A cameraman operates a professional film camera equipped with a ZEISS lens during a video shoot with a small production crew.

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.

Close-up of a person's face in soft focus with detailed lighting and shallow depth of field.

A person in an orange robe stands with arms crossed next to a wardrobe in a dimly lit, warmly toned bedroom.

For Langlev, the visual approach was inseparable from the film's emotional core. Working with two ARRI Alexa Mini 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.”

Three people wearing face masks are standing outdoors on a cobblestone surface, engaged in a discussion while holding papers and pointing, with a building facade in the background.

A film crew operates a camera rig and monitor in a dimly lit hallway, capturing a scene with ZEISS cinema lenses.

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

Langlev Takes Run Amok to Sundance with ZEISS Supreme Primes