America, land of unlimited opportunities, a place of longing for many, at least in the past. The USA was always a dream for Katharina Rivilis, who was born in the former Soviet Union and came to Germany at the age of six. At the beginning of the millennium it came true: As a teenager, she spent a year in New Mexico and in the fall of 2001 she experienced how the terrorist attack on September 11th shook the self-evident nature of a superpower. A quarter of a century later, Rivilis used her experiences as the basis for her debut film “I’ll Be Gone In June,” which was invited directly to Cannes. A typical coming-of-age story that sometimes follows well-trodden paths, but is always particularly convincing when it doesn’t want to analyze the character of the USA and its residents, but rather tells the story of being a teenager in impressionistic images.
After a stopover in New York, Franny (Naomi Cosma) feels like she’s at the end of the world when she reaches her final destination. The 16-year-old will live for a year in the small town of Las Cruces in the state of New Mexico, not far from the Mexican border. Her host family is religious and unenthusiastic about Franny’s crop tops. There are also strict rules at the local high school; Every morning a pledge is said to the flag. Everyday life in the USA is completely different than in Germany. Soon Franny is deported to another family. She begins spending time with American Sam (Bianca Dumais) and German exchange student Ida (Rebecca Schulz). Above all, she gets to know the attractive Elliot (David Flores), who also struggles with conventions. And on September 11, 2001, she, like the rest of the world, saw the planes fly into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center…
With Elliot (David Flores), Franny (Naomi Cosma) finally finds someone with whom she can speak openly about her experiences.
Katharina Rivilis did not set her debut film in Berlin, Munich or the German countryside, but in the USA, where she had an astonishing 50 days of shooting to realize her vision. It may have helped in this ambitious undertaking that she was supported by one of the most renowned German directors of the last few decades, who has also repeatedly filmed in the USA: Wim Wenders! The fact that Rivilis managed to get Wenders to produce her debut is definitely an achievement – but given the subject and its cinematic implementation, it doesn’t come as a complete surprise.
Rivilis takes an outside look at the USA. With fantastic shots of the vastness of the American West, it delivers a rather loose narrative structure full of impressionistic impressions, accompanied by pop songs that seem to comment on the images. There is also a game with different formats – here especially the typical digital look of a cheap video camera, which was popular around 2000 and which Franny uses to film her everyday life in New Mexico. “I’ll Be Gone In June” almost seems like a Wenders homage – with the exception of the female protagonist, who probably wouldn’t have existed with Wenders.
“I’ll Be Gone In June” stands out especially visually.
At times, however, it seems as if Rivilis was less inspired by the classic “Paris, Texas” Wenders than by that of the early noughties. At the beginning, the director himself lived in the USA and made unsuccessful films about his temporary adopted homeland. An example of this is “Land Of Plenty,” which feels like a stranger’s know-it-all look at a country he doesn’t understand. The political present after 9/11 also plays a role again and again for Rivilis. In addition to TV clips of the terrorist attacks, George Bush and the beginning of the war on terror, you can see discussions at school that are characterized by American overconfidence. But sometimes self-criticism shines through and the question is raised as to why the USA keeps waging wars. These scenes often seem didactic; A class debate about the military, for example, is downright wooden and comes across as poorly written and less authentic.
But whenever Rivilis relies less on words and more on her talent for observation, she elevates “I’ll Be Gone In June” to a higher level. For example, in shots of the typical emptiness of American landscapes or of teenagers hanging around as they search for their place in a world that even adults no longer understand. In moments like this, Rivilis manages to vary the well-known coming-of-age story in an interesting way. Then she uses music to create moods and lets the faces of her young actors do the talking, which can already express more than the often too forced words of the script.
Conclusion: In terms of content, Katharina Rivilis only varies familiar patterns in her directorial debut “I’ll Be Gone In June”, but visually the loosely autobiographical film about the life of an exchange student in the USA is completely convincing.
We saw I’ll Be Gone In June at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section.