Over the course of the past five years, the Norwegian-born, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli has acted in many of the films he has directed, more often than not playing a thinly veiled version of himself. In shorts such as A Place We Call Reality (2018), The Loser (2019), and Willem Dafoe (2023) – all available online – Borgli portrays, respectively: a director who has lost his way; an interviewer who cannot think of any questions to ask his idol; and an artist who cannot remember a famous actor’s name. But all of these characters suggest a kind of false modesty, for Borgli has proven himself adept at what he does, carving out a distinctive niche that allows space both for deep feeling and incessant trolling alongside a metacommentary on the act of filmmaking itself.