Borgman studied film science at Otago University in New Zealand, before moving to Copenhagen where he worked in post production, first as an assistant and later as a colorist and visual effects artist. In 2009 he started studying at the Danish film school Super16, his graduation project in 2012 being an experimental live film / theatre / happening entitled How to Say Goodbye.
Career
Borgman's first shortThe Man & the Albatross premièred in the Leopards of Tomorrow competition at the Locarno International Film Festival. His second short film, Lars and Peter, that captures the difficult emotions of a young boy and his relationship to his father in the face of great loss, was in the Official Selection in the short film competition at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Robert Award, the Danish Film Academy's national film prize. In 2009 Borgman completed production of three more short films, Behaviour, Kaleidoscope and Berik. Berik is about a severely disabled man, blind and deformed due to radiation poisoning, who lives a lonely life in eastern Kazakhstan until the 11-year-old Adil one day lose his football and knocks on Berik's door to get his help to find it. Berik won the Canal+ Grand Prix in 49th Semaine de la Critique's short film section at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival, and Best European Short Film at Flanders International Film Festival Ghent in 2010, the latter meriting the film a nomination for Best Short Film at the 24th European Film Awards in 2011. The 2011 short drama Brainy, a 30 minute novel film made with funding from The Danish Film Institute's New Danish Screen scheme, was about the 10-year-old Brian, an imaginative boy who deals with the loss of his grandfather by constructing a fantasy world. With a grant from Cinéfondation, Borgman spend five months in Paris writing his début feature film project, The Weight of Elephants. An adaption of Australian author Sonya Hartnett's book Of a Boy, the film is a coming of age drama about 14-year-old Jess, a local paper boy, whose life is flipped upside down when a horrific murder happens in the street where he delivers newspapers. The Zentropa-produced film was screened at Riga International Film Festival, Beijing International Film Festival, Saint-Quentin Ciné-Jeune Film Festival, Paris Cine Junior, Göteborg International Film Festival, and won the Youth Jury Award for Best Picture at the 2013 Vlissingen, Film by the Sea Festival, and the Oecumenical Prize at the 2013 Kiev Molodist International Film Festival. It was selected for the Forum at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.
