There’s an imposter syndrome lurking under the surface of The Travel Companion that makes it one of the most maddeningly authentic portrayals of art as an awkward and dependent struggle. Filmmaker Simon (Tristan Turner) wants to make a documentary but still hasn’t found the right angle, stringing words together in hopes that something groundbreaking will emerge in the edit. Helping his career is his roommate/friend Bruce (Anthony Oberbeck), an airline employee who gets free flights with a +1. But time is running out for both Simon’s film and the benefit of no-cost transportation worldwide when Bruce’s girlfriend, Beatrice (Naomi Asa), enters the equation.

There’s an awkward relatability to Simon’s character. You feel for him when he never gets a chance to speak at a film festival Q&A among other directors. You also want to crawl out of your own skin when he stumbles to read the room in his relationships, if only to avoid seeing yourself in this depiction of a socially flailing filmmaker. Directors Alex Mallis and Travis Wood have crafted characters so highly reflective that they feel biographical at times. Anybody who has been to art school or hung around filmmakers has met someone like Simon. That one artist with a voice struggling to get out, navigating cautiously through social interactions, feeling their way through the darkness of failure creeping behind them. Simon doesn’t just want to be the videographer making commercials for taxi companies, even though he might have to endure that day job a little longer before striking it as a revered director.

For such devotion to making players more complex than cartoonish, the film has an almost effortless charm in finding the humor in this situation. Simon attempts to make a case for his film to a festival coordinator before a movie, waffling on whether it is in draft form. He tries to make amends with Bruce by upping his lunch break game to include earbud chargers and a birthday card, trying and failing to not make this about reassuring his flight privileges. But as Beatrice becomes more successful and Bruce grows more tired of Simon’s presence, things start falling apart, despite how hard Simon tries to weather the storm he feels he can’t fully fight. There is no explosion of his frustrations in a big monologue, spun from the jealousy of Beatrice’s little annoyances, like drinking from his favorite mug, to the bigger issues of her having a more successful commercial filmmaking career. That inability to connect plagues Simon, with the only constant that keeps him going in life being his movie project, drowning in footage from abroad and described as a soup of metaphors.

For a film restricted to the cramped settings of apartments, movie theaters, and airport terminals, it is remarkably well shot. There are some visually impressive scenes, most notably the lunchtime scenes of Simon and Bruce eating on their apartment stoop. The strong cinematography bodes well for enhancing this familiar assortment of characters and situations to feel more resonant. There’s a devastating despair in how Simon’s refusal to be honest with Bruce ends up with him missing a flight and making his return home awkward, guzzling the wine Bruce had intended for a date night. There’s no drunken rant, but a restrained loathing that can never fully emerge from someone so frustratingly collected as Simon, unable to realize when he casually crosses a line in conversation with Beatrice. We all know somebody like this, and if you don’t, well, it might be you.

I think this is why The Travel Companion works so well: its earnest awkwardness in trying not to let dependence be obvious. Simon wants to keep a friend like Bruce in his life for more than just free flights, but it won’t last. There’s nothing he can do to stop Bruce from moving on, unwilling to stick around as Simon continues to wax about filmmaking. The fear of losing a friend and someone to talk to about your passion is hauntingly tragic, especially in a movie that does garner chuckles from this character’s confounding strategies. He’s the person you want to laugh at for being so awkward, but internally cringe about when recognizing the most relatable of flaws. You can’t possibly be that person, you reason with yourself. You’re not too oblivious to read where social relationships are going or too obsessed with your own projects to notice when your friendship is faltering. You’re just, like, a more complex individual, well, not that complex, you’re not weird or anything, but you’re unique in a way that doesn’t conform and are more curious about the world. You stagger to define yourself and realize in that moment you’re speaking with the same meandering pitch of Simon’s in-progress movie. At least we can laugh at that admission.