NYWIFT Blog

By Katie Chambers

Longtime NYWIFT Member Laela Kilbourn returns to Sundance as her latest project, Run Amok, for which she was a camera operator, premieres in the U.S. Dramatic Competition.

In Run Amok, a teenage girl stages an elaborate musical about the one day her high school wishes it could forget. This striking debut feature from writer-director NB Mager boldly wades into the thorny aftermath of a school shooting with thoughtfulness and a refreshing recentering of the young people most directly affected.

Director of Photography Kilbourn has accomplished narrative and documentary works that present intimate portraits of character and compelling stories of transformation; her over 30 years in filmmaking inform her use of verité and studio techniques to build cinematic experiences of discovery and connection. An Emmy winner for Outstanding Cinematography for her work on Girls State, she also won a Best Feature Cinematography festival award for Swim Team, and has filmed eight Sundance Film Festival documentary feature premieres, such as the DuPont-Columbia Journalism Award winner This Is Home: A Refugee Story; Peabody Award–winning How to Dance in Ohio; and Emmy-nominated Word Wars. She also shot Sync or Swim, winner of the Billie Award for Journalism from the Women’s Sports Foundation, and filmed History’s eleven-part docuseries Sandhogs.

She spoke to us about her latest film and her long history with Sundance.

 

 

 

Run Amok centers on a teenage girl staging an ambitious musical about a day her high school would rather erase. As the camera operator, how did you approach capturing both the protagonist’s emotional interiority and the musical’s heightened, performative world?

The director NB Mager had a number of specific ideas regarding the visual approach, because this film pursues a narrow path between musical comedy and tragic drama and she wanted to achieve a certain tone that was both accessible and empathetic. In collaborating with another cinematographer, in this case DP Shachar Langlev, the job is to interpret those ideas and to present physical solutions that will best realize that vision and tone. I think Shachar and I worked well together to combine our technical skillsets with our creative understandings of the story being told. We discussed camera placement, camera movement, where to put the focus, and how to overcome technical challenges and limited resources to achieve certain shots.

Sometimes just awareness of an eyeline between actors can change the feel of the scene; sometimes it is adding movement, or a sudden shift in focus. I want to also shout out our technical crew, who were stellar in supporting these efforts, especially A camera focus puller Sammy Leonard and our key grip Keven Herrera.

 

 

Your work often creates an intimate sense of proximity, whether you’re filming young people in Girls State or communities under pressure in your documentary features. What visual or observational choices did you make on Run Amok to support themes of memory, reckoning, and self-expression?

I think that intimacy comes from listening. Whether on a narrative project with actors or documentary project with nonfiction subjects, my role is to give the people being filmed respect, and to pay attention to what they need from me as the person behind the camera.

Sometimes an actor will engage often with me and want to know technical and creative details about the visual process, while another actor might require more distance and quiet and a sense of invisibility. If I am sensitive to how they work, and make my aesthetic decisions factoring in that awareness, it is then no longer a matter of lens choice or the lighting color palette or other tools used – the intimacy arises out of the safety of the space in front of the lens.

When an actor feels supported to do their best work, when a documentary subject feels acknowledged and respected as they live their life, it can lead to that connective magic that happens on camera.

 

 

 

With a background in social anthropology and decades of verité documentary work, how do those instincts show up when you’re working on a narrative project like Run Amok, especially one that blends realism with theatricality?

In both instances, verité documentary and narrative work, the preparation ahead of time and the alertness in the moment that you bring to it are key to capturing something extraordinary on camera. Discussions with the director and the creative team during prep give you the underlying comprehension of the hopes, the stakes, and the goals of telling this particular story; in the moment of filming on set you bring that awareness and couple it with attention to what the actors are actually doing in front of the camera, so that you are engaged and in tune with them. Ideally it is a kind of dance, an interactive flow between the camerawork and the performance.

 

 

Having filmed eight documentary features that premiered at Sundance, what does it mean to return to the festival with Run Amok, and how has your relationship to Sundance evolved over the course of your career?

My first feature at Sundance was in 2004, which is a long time ago now, and the festival itself has changed a lot over those 22 years. I am not the first person to say this, but it was a more accessible experience back then, and I think had more opportunities for unknown yet talented people (both in front of and behind the camera).

I do recognize that its current higher profile can have big ramifications for the select few that make it in. It has become a kind of magic word that conjures up high expectations; my hope that it also allows for an openness that can transform obscurity into in connection.

 

 

 

You’ve worked across an extraordinary range of platforms and genres while remaining deeply committed to stories of transformation. What continues to excite you about film, and what are you most curious to explore next in your cinematography?

Filmmaking is deeply human-centered work. It takes many people to make a movie in the first place, and the whole point is to ultimately connect to even more people with the story being told. I love that my work on a conceptual level brings me into contact with ever more human experiences and ideas, especially in this age of individualistic disconnection and disaffection from society. We do amazing things together, and a film is an expression of that collective power and connectivity.

Because I am at heart a practical person, I want the work of my mind and hands to continue to go out into the world in tangible form, as something that other people can react to sensorily and maybe even be transformed by. That possibility keeps me enthralled and engaged with cinematography as an art form and as a practice.

 

Run Amok is playing at the Sundance Film Festival in-person and online through February 2, 2026.

Check out all the NYWIFT members at Sundance 2026. 

Learn more about Laela Kilbourn’s work at laelakilbourn.com. 

 

About Laela Kilbourn

Director of photography Laela Kilbourn has accomplished narrative and documentary works that present intimate portraits of character and compelling stories of transformation; her over 30 years in filmmaking inform her use of verité and studio techniques to build cinematic experiences of discovery and connection. An Emmy winner for Outstanding Cinematography for her work on Girls State, she also won a Best Feature Cinematography festival award for Swim Team, and has filmed eight Sundance Film Festival documentary feature premieres, such as the DuPont-Columbia Journalism Award winner This Is Home: A Refugee Story; Peabody Award–winning How to Dance in Ohio; and Emmy-nominated Word Wars. She also shot Sync or Swim, winner of the Billie Award for Journalism from the Women’s Sports Foundation, and filmed History’s eleven-part docuseries Sandhogs. Her noted narrative work includes the black comedy Crabs in a Barrel, featured on HBO Max; The Duke and Duchess of Queens, awarded Best Narrative Short Film at Katra Latinx Festival; Someone Loves You, Best Short Film winner at the ESSENCE Film Festival; and the feature Death of a Fool, available on Amazon Prime Video.

She has worked on projects for FX, NBC, PBS, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Epix, Amazon Studios, AMC, A&E, TBS, Nick Jr., NickMom, ESPN, Disney, History, MTV, VH1, and WeTV. A member of the International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, New York Women in Film & Television, and the International Collective of Female+ Cinematographers, she has served as a juror for the Emmys, the Cinema Eye Honors, and the Brooklyn International Film Festival; as a panelist on cinematography at the Canon Creative Studio and DOC NYC PRO; and as a guest speaker at The New School. She has a degree in social anthropology from Harvard University.

 

(Headshot courtesy of Laela Kilbourn; all other images courtesy of Sundance Institute)