LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Zaxton Rothberg is a man with a plan. The senior at Atherton High School in Louisville has a goal to be a film director, and he’s well on the way to making it happen. As his media arts teacher Steven Boros puts it, “I’ve been teaching 22 years and Zach really stands out. He’s not only a hard worker, but his creativity is off the charts too.”
It all starts in the classroom, where he has a 4.2 GPA while winning the A.P. Scholar Award. He’s vice president of the National Honor Society and lead ambassador for Academies of Louisville.
It continues in the Atherton Theatre Department, where he went from backstage helper to head of sound to head of lighting to technical director. Along the way he won the “Rising Star” and “Technical Excellence” Awards. He’s also stage manager at Little Colonel Playhouse. He said, “The feeling of camaraderie and family in theater is not matched in any other extracurricular I’ve been in.”
He’s also instrumental at “Atherton on Air”, the school’s student-produced TV newscast. He’s moved from correspondent to co-editor to producer.
Rothberg’s also a project director for Atherton Pro Media, a student organization that provides video coverage of events around town.
Boros said, “He’s in charge of a group of his peers. It’s so rare that he’s able to do that so successfully because these are kids his age and his class, [but] they’ll actually look up to him and listen to him out in the field and take his advice.”
Rothberg is already directing short films and his movie “Spawn,” won the Best Director Award at the Atherton Film Festival and is receiving consideration for national honors. Rothberg described it as “An experimental film that expressed an internal conflict through an external medium. Basically, a man finds himself in a maze chasing what is revealed at the end to be himself. So it was kind of this idea of the conflict being internal even though he’s chasing an external person.”
In addition, he’s a published author. He wrote the historical fiction novella “Torn Heart,” which he said was “a collection of works that challenges reader bias. You’re not given context to the historical event it’s based on on purpose, so that you have no bias going into reading it and you’re slowly revealed to the true circumstances throughout the novel.”
Rothberg supplements his creative side with a giving one, guided by his faith. He’s co-leader of the Atherton Jewish Student Union and said his religion helps keep him on the right path.
“At the end of my sophomore year, I had a kind of spiritual reawakening where I felt the need and want to reconnect with my cultural religious roots. So seeking answers through my faith kind of helped me find guiding principles that helped guide my morality and my sense of self. Today Judaism is a really important factor for how I decide how to hold myself to certain standards, and it’s an amazing way for me to figure out the guiding principles of my life and just sticking to that morality that I hold very dear,” Rothberg said.
He’s donated over 450 hours of community service through theatre endeavors, Beta Club and helping the Newberg Tennis Association and other nonprofits.
He said, “The most important thing in my life is my connection to other people. I think it’s important to give to others because it’s really easy to not realize how much other people give to you. You know, there’s a lot of times where I sit back and look at every single person who’s helped motivate me or push me in the direction I’m going right now, and if I tried to make it into a list, I’d be writing for years. There’s so many small things to even large impacts that have motivated me. For me, giving back is my outlet to express my gratitude for others.”
Rothberg plans to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design to study film and television and prepare for what comes next. As he tells it, “The industry is so complex, at the beginning just getting my foot in whatever will do. But my end goal is I want to be a director of large-scale independent films that really strike a chord with the audience. So maybe not a blockbuster like Avengers, where it’s just for a big studio, but something more along the lines [of] Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, where it’s more independent, but has a lot of meaning behind it.”
Boros said Rothberg’s combination of work ethic, discipline and personality will lead to success. “He has the attitude and the motivation and the skills to all go together. His willingness to work toward goals and his determination and his people skills, I really think that would make him a great Director,” he added.
So when he wins his first Oscar, remember you met him here first as a Spectrum News 1 High School Scholar. We are proud to award him a $1,000 scholarship to attend SCAD.
