HE CREATORS of Run didn’t
set out to make the most
relatable film of 2020, but
they have: It’s about a young
woman who desperately
wants to go outside.
No, she isn’t stopped by a virus. She uses
a wheelchair—just like the actress who
plays her, Kiera Allen, and in the film’s most
unforgettable sequence, she faces a series of
obstacles designed to keep her trapped in her
room. They might seem insurmountable even
for someone with the full use of her legs.
We spoke by phone with Run writer-
director Aneesh Chaganty, co-writer
Sev Ohanian, and producer Natalie Qasabian
just as Los Angeles began its self-quarantine
against the coronavirus. Soon after we spoke,
their film, like so many others, was pulled
from the release calendar. But they were in
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good spirits, trying to make the best of their
time indoors, and hopeful that Run will
bring joy whenever and wherever it’s seen.
The three embrace films with built-in
cinematic limitations. Their first film, 2018’s
Searching, is a marvel of a thriller that never
cuts away from a computer screen. It follows
a father (John Cho) as he searches desper-
ately for his missing teenage daughter.
Run very consciously avoids having its
characters spend too much time online,
but it does spend a lot of time in the house.
It couldn’t be more timely, now that the
whole world is fighting off cabin fever.
Allen plays a high school student named
Chloe who lives with her mother, played by
Sarah Paulson. Chloe has asthma and uses
a wheelchair, but she’s almost completely
self-reliant and able to get around—until
she starts to learn some dark secrets about
her mother. At that point, the story takes
a turn, and her mother does everything
possible to keep her indoors.
Moviemakers who tell stories aboutIn Run, a tight space makes for taut mother-daughter drama that stars
Kiera Allen, the rare lead actor in a major movie who uses a wheelchair in real lifepeople who use wheelchairs often say
they tried their best to cast actors who use
wheelchairs, too. But they almost inevitably
also say that they just couldn’t find the right
actor for the part. For the Run moviemak-
ers, there was never a question.
“It was never a controversial topic between
the three of us. It was sort of like, ‘Yeah, we’re
doing this right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Cool.’ And then the
process of actually finding this person proved
to be an intense and countrywide sort of
search. And we ended up finding this incred-
ible talent in Kiera Allen,” says Chaganty.
Their search included a grassroots effort
to find the right actress online. They
encountered one especially discouraging ob-
stacle: Actresses who claimed that they used
wheelchairs in their real lives—but didn’t.
“There were a couple of young ladies we
saw that submitted themselves as people
with disabilities. And we were like, wow,
they’re really talented... but somebody
looked them up on Instagram,” said
Ohanian. “There were videos of them walk-BY TIM MOLLOY