Sitting in front of an expansive wall of floor to ceiling bookcases, David Michôd, the director behind films like “Animal Kingdom” and “The King,” confesses that for the first ten years after film school, he was “stone cold broke.”
“I really didn’t know if there was a career at the end of the path,” he says, before going on to discuss how crafting short films during the early days of his career lead him to his current vocation as a feature filmmaker. But this isn’t a private seminar with the acclaimed Michôd, or even an actual interview. Rather, it’s a nearly 40-minute, Michôd-led creative masterclass, and one example of the many types of content available within Rover’s catalogue, a six-month-old streaming startup dedicated to democratizing the process of creating short films.
Launched in November 2025 by the Australia-based founder Alec Green and co-founders Jack Zimmerman and Will Gibb, the platform pairs a catalogue of short films — including Cannes Palme d’Or winners and Sundance Grand Jury Prize recipients — with the details needed for aspiring directors to pull back the curtain on the process. “Platforms like Mubi or Criterion are incredible for watching films,” says Zimmerman. “What we’re focused on is the layer underneath that, the process.”
