Sick Of Myself

In this pitch black satirical comedy, director Kristoffer Borgli portrays a toxic relationship that rapidly escalates to frightening new levels of narcissistic one-upmanship. Signe and Thomas are a young couple with an unhealthily competitive streak which takes a vicious turn when Thomas suddenly breaks through as a contemporary artist. In response, Signe makes a desperate and shockingly self destructive attempt to regain her status by deliberately making herself ill to attract attention and sympathy. Borgli brilliantly satirises the self promotional tendencies of contemporary media and the attention seeking impulse in all of us.

It was a wish that I should start the film as a romantic drama, start there and thus plant certain expectations in the audience. The fact that one has started in a completely different genre makes it very surprising where the film eventually goes. I want to control the expectations of the audience. This is also the case with Former Cult Member Hears Music For The First Time, about a woman who has escaped from her sect family. The idea is also to start a film as Sick of Myself in a world you recognize, not in a twisted universe. With film, you can set the premises exactly as you want, and the moment of surprise comes out of expectations. If the expectation is that “anything can happen”, then nothing is surprising. The universe we encounter at the beginning of Sick of Myself is more recognizable than where we end up.

Director Kristoffer Borgli