MILWAUKEE, WI — A common frustration—signing up for a free trial, forgetting about it, and being stuck with an annual fee—has been turned into a critically acclaimed short film that is about to reach a wider audience. "I Forgot to Unsubscribe from a Stock Footage Service," directed by David William James Elliott, will debut on YouTube on July 24, 2026, on the newly launched channel of production company RIOUGA.
The film has enjoyed a successful run on the independent festival circuit, with screenings in Mumbai, Tokyo, Paris, Cannes, London, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York. It follows a filmmaker who resorts to increasingly desperate schemes to reclaim his money using the stock footage he inadvertently paid for. When given the chance to walk away, he instead doubles down, uncovering a dormant desire to become a creator. The piece has been described as part memoir, part metatextual documentary, and part existential horror film for aging millennials trapped in the service industry.
During its festival run, the film accumulated dozens of awards, including—somehow—Best Stunt and Best Female Director, despite being directed by a man and comprised entirely of stock footage. It also gained recognition for its voice work, writing, editing, and its loving homage to David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," recreated entirely with stock clips. This bizarre selection of awards has inspired an upcoming project exposing scam film festivals, though Elliott remains tight-lipped on the details until filming concludes.
Elliott—an MIT and Stanford graduate, alumnus of Second City, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Steppenwolf, and The Annoyance, and a BJJ Black Belt—famously walked away from an opportunity to write for Saturday Night Live in 2012, opting instead to build sustainable farms in developing nations. He credits the subscription snafu with inciting his return to the arts, which helped usher in five other film projects and a poetry book, all released within the past six months.
"I was happy making one-off appearances on murder mystery shows and helping with camera work," Elliott said from his five-floor Milwaukee workshop. "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."
Indeed, "Hypernormalization 2: Revenge of the Titans" began as a throwaway gag in "I Forgot" before transforming into its own 60-minute documentary. Despite facing legal hurdles, it went on to win several awards, including "Most Likely to Be Cancelled" from a dubious festival with no digital footprint.
Now that its festival run is over, "I Forgot to Unsubscribe from a Stock Footage Service" is set to debut on YouTube on July 24, 2026, on RIOUGA's debuting channel. The brainchild of Juan Sebastian Carcosa and David Elliott, RIOUGA is a startup production company set to explore everything from fine art to niche subcultures. Described by its founders as "PBS meets Adult Swim, for burnouts, by burnouts," the network is currently developing three interview series alongside a collection of short films and documentaries scheduled for release throughout the summer and fall.
RIOUGA (Royal Institute of Objectively Universally Good Art) is an independent arts and culture production company focused on creativity, the surreal, and the human. Designed as a counterpoint to both AI and corporate polish, it intends to inspire people to pick up their old hobbies and return to their dreams.
