David William James Elliott's cult short film, I Forgot to Unsubscribe from a Stock Footage Service, will debut on YouTube on July 24, 2026, on the newly launched channel of startup production company RIOUGA. The film, which has garnered dozens of awards during its festival run—including Best Stunt and Best Female Director, despite being directed by a man and composed entirely of stock footage—follows a filmmaker's increasingly desperate schemes to reclaim money from a forgotten subscription, ultimately discovering a dormant desire to create.
Elliott, an MIT and Stanford graduate with training at Second City, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Steppenwolf, and The Annoyance, walked away from a chance to write for Saturday Night Live in 2012 to build sustainable farms in developing nations. He credits the subscription snafu with sparking his return to the arts, leading to five other film projects and a poetry book released in the past six months. 'I was happy making one-off appearances on murder mystery shows and helping with camera work,' Elliott said. 'But a combination of being stuck with that subscription and receiving a free waiver from the Milwaukee Film Festival inspired this project. That, in turn, inspired a variety of other projects, including exposés on the art industry and the film festival vanity press machine.'
One such project, Hypernormalization 2: Revenge of the Titans, began as a throwaway gag in I Forgot before evolving into a 60-minute documentary that won several awards, including 'Most Likely to Be Cancelled' from a dubious festival with no digital footprint. The film's success has also inspired an upcoming project exposing scam film festivals, though Elliott remains tight-lipped on details until filming concludes.
RIOUGA (Royal Institute of Objectively Universally Good Art), co-founded by Juan Sebastian Carcosa and David Elliott, aims to explore fine art and niche subcultures. Described as 'PBS meets Adult Swim, for burnouts, by burnouts,' the network is developing three interview series alongside short films and documentaries scheduled for release throughout the summer and fall. According to its founders, RIOUGA is designed as a counterpoint to both AI and corporate polish, intending to inspire people to pick up their old hobbies and return to their dreams.
