April, 2021: the team behind Sogbots, an independent film production company based in Echo Park, had a conundrum on their hands. They wanted to submit their latest short film “Bye Bye Buddy” to film festivals, but had no community outside of themselves to talk to about the process. As a group of young filmmakers with no formal training, the Sogbots team wanted to meet other people in similar positions as their own, but didn’t know how. So as they considered the festival submission process that awaited them, the team decided to make a community where they couldn’t find one: by starting a film festival themselves.
“Everything from there was us sitting in our living room, just frantically researching,” said Noah Morse, the festival’s Creative Director and Director of Development, and a founding member of Sogbots. The team walked around their neighborhood posting flyers everywhere, and reached out to anyone they could think of who could help them pull the festival together.
Despite the uphill journey, the Sogbots team powered through, using their experience working together on film sets to approach the organizational and collaborative aspects of the festival set-up process. But when times got especially tough, the team had a phrase they would jokingly tell each other: “We’re too big to fail.”
Morse and Nir Liebenthal — the festival’s Director of Strategy and Operations, and a founding member of Sogbots — emphasized that this idea was an ongoing bit within their group; it’s less that they took themselves that seriously, and more that they were acknowledging how much effort they put in, and how they needed to see the project through.
A little over a year later, the inaugural LA’s Rich & Successful Film Festival (RSFF) was born, and premiered at Beverly Hills’ Lumiere Music Hall to a sold-out crowd.
Although Sogbots hadn’t envisioned starting a festival when they formed as a production company, it quickly became apparent that “this might be a good avenue for us to get to know people,” said Morse. “We found that there was great value in it for us and for everyone else. And so here we are a couple of years later.”
RSFF’s third festival was its biggest yet, with three days of events ranging from a mixer for filmmakers selected this year, to a pre-festival game show party — hosted by comedians David Brown and Wyatt Fair — to the festival itself. And for the first time, RSFF was co-sponsored by American Cinematheque, a powerhouse theater group in the LA independent film world. Despite the festival’s expansion, all of the events maintained a singular focus.
“We want to create an awesome experience for other filmmakers in this city that brings them together,” said Liebenthal. The community-building through filmmaking translated into community-building through the festival. “The hope is we can create a more open and accessible screening program and include more filmmakers and create a bigger community, while maintaining the energy that we strive so hard to achieve every single year,” said Morse.
That “North Star” goal — as Liebenthal later described it — was evident throughout the weekend’s events. Both the game show party and the festival had a convivial energy; regardless of how someone ended up in each of those rooms, it was clear through their conversation and enthusiasm that they had a passion for independent film and independent filmmaking.
The events culminated on Saturday with the festival itself, which took place at the historic Egyptian Theatre Hollywood. Every part of this event was meticulously put together, from a photo backdrop, to trading cards of the featured directors, to a beautifully designed newspaper-style event program. Imani Davis, a film programmer for American Cinematheque, opened the night. Liebenthal followed with the rest of the festival director team (Morse, Jeremy Roth-Rose, Page Brady and Dylan Trupiano).
Thirteen films screened over about three hours with intermission. The full lineup is below:
- “Baggage,” 2024, Dir. Tim Hendrix
- “VOCÊ MEANS YOU,” 2023, Dir. Mahyar Mandegar
- “Confessions,” 2023, Dir. Stephanie Kaznocha
- “The Jennifer Meyers Story,” 2023, Dir. Caroline Symons
- “Order for Pickup,” 2023, Dir. Jackie! Zhou
- “Still Life,” 2023, Dir. Connor Griffith
- “Peas,” 2024, Dir. Maky Rupert
- “RAT!”, 2024, Dir. Neal Suresh Mulani
- “Half-Light,” 2023, Dir. Lauren Jevnikar
- “The Swimmer,” 2023, Dir. Máté Boegi
- “Thru The Wire,” 2024, Dir. An Nguyen
- “Creating Things,” 2022, Dir. Bryan Simpson & Taylor Simpson
- “Tennis, Oranges,” 2024, Dir. Sean Pecknold
As it stands, RSFF is not an award-granting festival, instead opting for a curatorial approach. The films they chose highlighted a wide range of subjects, voices, styles and mediums; the program itself took its audience on an emotional journey, each film distinct, but all programmed in a specific order to complement one another. As a curatorial festival, this journey is important to Morse, who said his personal philosophy is that “the thing that’s gonna keep people coming back is the movies. Everything else is gravy.”
Putting together a grassroots film festival seems like an impossible task, and the RSFF team has not only done it three times now, they’ve done it with increasing popularity. When asked about the future of RSFF, Morse and Liebenthal explained that due to their team’s philosophy and how new the festival is, the secret to their success thus far has been focusing on the task at hand rather than getting caught up in too much future-planning.
But, as Liebenthal emphasized, the team wants to continue “collaborating with other people to make movies and doing the things that we love.” And as he said in his speech to the packed house at the Egyptian, “If you all keep coming back, we’re gonna keep doing this.”