Richard Burgin

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. Following the release of Fang (2022), Richard is directing the surreal horror comedy The Slaughter Brothers Dime Circus, starring Lynne Griffin and Sean Sullivan in a fantastical descent into clown mayhem, with a team of executive producers including Paul Feig.

Richard is a prolific painter, video artist, soundtrack composer, and podcaster, having done over 50 interviews since 2020. Richard is working on the experimental sci-fi horror movie Mal Somnia and the Greek Island romantic thriller Miro's Knot, which happen to be two wildly different movies. 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 (2024), starring Sean Whalen, Alan Ruck, Daniel Roebuck, 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 feature films Operation EX-I-33, starring Sandy Johnson, Janet Tracy Keijser, Daniel Martin Berkey, and Robby Garber; and the sci-fi action adventure In Tenebras 2: Timelines, starring Michael Paré, Tayah Kansik, and Bishop Ali Stevens.

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 helped edit and produce the Indiegogo campaign videos Bradlee: Origins (2024) and The Slaughter Brothers Return! (2025) to raise funding for Bradlee (2025) and The Slaughter Brothers Dime Circus as an executive producer. 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.