About
In retrospect, it was a crazy decision for Richard Burgin to make movies. Richard's awareness of his own mental health problems helped him tap into that for his work, creating characters with autism, paranoia, depression, schizophrenia, OCD, and other conditions. In 2022, Richard hosted the premiere of his first feature film, Fang (2022), at the Davis Theater in Chicago. Fang (2022) stunned audiences and critics with the intense body horror of a man turning into a rat (Dylan LaRay) and the tragic decline of his mother with Parkinson's dementia, played by Lynn Lowry.
Richard is a prolific painter, video artist, soundtrack composer, and podcaster, having done over 50 interviews since 2020. Richard's experimental videos include Hi (2011), Box (2013), Dark Texture (2020), Blood Waters (2023), Garden Sequence (2023), Scartography (2023), Painting with Isa (2023), Pale Circus (2024), Northerly Island (2024), and Lost Agora (2024). Since September 2023, Richard has hosted a podcast, The Cinesin Show (2023), with his girlfriend Isabela Rangel.
Richard has contributed as a producer to feature films including Project Skyquake (2022), starring Laura Ellen Wilson, Tom Sizemore, and Robert LaSardo; The Forest Hills (2023), starring Shelley Duvall, Chiko Mendez, and Edward Furlong; and Crust, starring Sean Whalen, Alan Ruck, and Felissa Rose. Richard has acted in Tears of the Damned, directed by his frequent collaborator John Joseph Dunn, and had a brief masked appearance as Dr. Rat in Fang (2022). Richard is an executive producer of the upcoming psychological horror drama Operation EX-I-33 (2025), directed by Robby Garber and Janet Tracy Keijser, and the upcoming short film Breaking the Plateau, starring Markella Kavenagh and Charlotte McBurney.
Richard's advertising work includes Fiverr: Help Is a Few Clicks Away (2023), Fiverr: Lost in a World (2023), and the short PSA Autism Awareness: Think Before You Label (2023). Wildlife Nightmare (2023)and Boynya (2023) were made to help support the fight against animal cruelty and Ukraine's victory against the Russian invasion. Richard has also worked as a marketing coordinator for the documentary Best Served Cold: How a Revenge Film was Buried for Decades, featuring interviews with Paul Schrader, Steve Railsback, and Gary Conway. In 2024, Richard served as the Co-Festival Director of the Mental Health Warrior Film Festival in Madison, Wisconsin.
Richard has over a decade of filmmaking experience, starting with the video editing class he took in middle school. Richard made the comedy sketch The Eagle Program (2015) during his freshman year of college. Working with his father, Richard W. Burgin, Richard made two short films based on his short stories, All Ears (2016) and The Identity Club (2018). After his father's death in 2020, Richard dedicated Fang (2022) to him and pushed himself harder than ever before to be the best filmmaker he could be, like his dad would have wanted. Richard is a passionate, dedicated filmmaker with an obsessive work ethic and a wild imagination.