Kristoffer Borgli Under Fire After Controversial Essay Resurfaces, Revealing Relationship With High School Student
An old magazine essay written by filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli has recently resurfaced on Reddit, causing a lot of talk online just as his career in Hollywood is taking off.
Borgli is the director behind the new movie The Drama, which stars big actors like Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. Before this, he was known for the film Dream Scenario with Nicolas Cage.
The article was originally published in 2012 in a Norwegian magazine called D2. At the time, Borgli was 27 years old. In the essay, which has been translated by social media users, he writes about a romantic relationship he had with a teenage girl who was still in high school. Even though the legal age of consent in Norway is 16, relationships with such a large age gap can still cause a lot of arguments and social tension.
In the writing, Borgli talks about how he felt conflicted at first because his friends told him the relationship was wrong. He looked at movies and books to try to figure out his own feelings. He specifically mentioned the movie Manhattan by Woody Allen, which shows an older man with a 17-year-old girl. Borgli wrote, I chose to listen to Woody over my friends.
He described his time with the girl as a very special summer. He mentioned that they spent a lot of time together in her parents’ apartment while they were away, drinking their wine and reading their books. He felt that even though she was much younger, they were similar in many ways because she was very smart and grew up around a lot of culture in the city. He wrote, The summer ended, and our weeklong weekends became ordinary weekdays. She was May; I was December.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the director’s team and the movie studio A24 have been asked for a comment on the resurfaced essay. The Drama is expected to be a dark comedy about a couple’s relationship falling apart, which fits the style of movies Borgli usually makes. This old essay is now bringing new attention to the filmmaker’s past views on relationships just as he becomes a more famous name in the industry.
In my opinion, it is always a bit tricky when an artist’s past writings come back to haunt them years later. People change a lot between their late 20s and their 40s, but the internet never forgets anything. It is interesting to see how much of his real-life “unsettling” experiences might have influenced the types of uncomfortable movies he makes now. However, it definitely makes some people look at his work in a different way.
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