Award-winning director 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 RIOUGA channel. The film, which has garnered dozens of awards during its festival run, explores the absurdity of modern subscription culture through a filmmaker's increasingly desperate attempts to reclaim his money using stock footage.
The film follows a protagonist who, after failing to cancel a stock footage subscription, embarks on a series of schemes that ultimately awaken a dormant creative drive. Described as part memoir, part metatextual documentary, and part existential horror for aging millennials trapped in the service industry, the piece has resonated with audiences worldwide. It has screened at festivals in Mumbai, Tokyo, Paris, Cannes, London, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York.
During its run, the film accumulated a bizarre array of awards, including Best Stunt and Best Female Director—despite being directed by a man and composed entirely of stock footage. It also received recognition for its voice work, writing, editing, and a loving homage to David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, recreated entirely with stock clips. These accolades have inspired an upcoming project exposing scam film festivals, though Elliott remains tight-lipped on details until filming concludes.
Elliott, an MIT and Stanford graduate and alumnus of Second City, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Steppenwolf, and The Annoyance, as well as a BJJ Black Belt, famously turned down an opportunity to write for Saturday Night Live in 2012 to build sustainable farms in developing nations. He credits the subscription mishap with reigniting his artistic career, leading to five other film projects and a poetry book 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 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."
One such project, Hypernormalization 2: Revenge of the Titans, began as a throwaway gag in I Forgot to Unsubscribe before evolving into a 60-minute documentary. Despite legal hurdles, it won several awards, including "Most Likely to Be Cancelled" from a dubious festival with no digital footprint.
RIOUGA (Royal Institute of Objectively Universally Good Art), the production company behind the release, was co-founded by Juan Sebastian Carcosa and David Elliott. Described as "PBS meets Adult Swim, for burnouts, by burnouts," the network is developing three interview series and a collection of short films and documentaries for release throughout summer and fall. RIOUGA aims to counter AI and corporate polish by inspiring people to pick up old hobbies and return to their dreams.
