What Is the Kristoffer Borgli Age Gap Relationship Controversy?

Film director Kristoffer Borgli has everyone talking about the inappropriate age-gap relationship he had with a teenage girl, and the controversy has resurfaced amid his latest film, The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.

The Norwegian filmmaker calls his relationship with the teenage girl his "May-December" romance, and people are not happy. The legal age in Norway is 16. However, it's frowned upon when adults have relationships with teenagers in the country, and it's a shock that not only did the film director have the relationship, but he wrote about it as well.

The Norwegian movie director admitted to having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl when he was 26. He admitted to having sex with the teenager in her parents' apartment and said that the girl was in high school and was not old enough to vote.

He seemed to justify his actions by saying that the teenager was more mature than he was at 16, and that her cultural knowledge surpassed his because his was delayed by 10 years, since he grew up in the country, and she grew up in Oslo.

The film director wrote an essay detailing the relationship for the weekend magazine of Dagens Naeringsliv (D2), which is a financial daily like the Wall Street Journal. He was 27 when he wrote the piece and shared details of his relationship with the teenage girl. He actually references film director Woody Allen, a man who was accused by Mia Farrow's daughter, Dylan, of sexual abuse, per the BBC.

"I woke up in the cramped little apartment I was temporarily renting after I moved out – or was thrown out – by my ex half a year earlier," Borgli wrote, per The Hollywood Reporter. "Beside me lay a blonde girl, a high school student enjoying the sporadic holidays in May."

"If a film made in 1979, in which Woody Allen’s 42-year-old character has a public relationship with a 17-year-old girl, is portrayed exclusively in a positive way and causes no controversy in its own time, then why shouldn’t my relationship ... in 2012 be 'within bounds'? I chose to listen to Woody over my friends." Gross.

"The time we spent together that summer in her parents’ apartment was nonetheless the best and most exotic summer I’ve ever had," he wrote, adding that he had to climb out the window when her parents came home. "The summer ended, and our weeklong weekends became ordinary weekdays. She was May; I was December."

Reddit users tore the director to shreds after learning about his admission.

"What a cliché f--king loser," noted one. "It’s so funny that every one of the many, many, many males who carry on like this genuinely believes their grossness is ~different lmao."

"He felt he was different enough that it warranted an almost 800-word essay," added another, "That mentions Woody Allen at least three times."

The film director has not yet commented on the controversy.