I’ll Be Gone in June

Franny, a 16-year-old German girl, arrives in a remote town in New Mexico in 2001 as an exchange student. Surrounded by the desert landscape and an unfamiliar culture, she makes new friends, falls in love for the first time, and begins to build a new life for herself, knowing that in June she will have to leave it all behind. Then September 11 happens, and the America she has arrived in begins to change before her eyes. Katharina Rivilis’s debut feature is based on her own experiences as an exchange student in the United States and combines an intimate coming-of-age story with a historical moment marked by a loss of innocence. Without placing national events at the center of the film, Rivilis observes turn-of-the-millennium America through the eyes of a young outsider, capturing that singular age when a temporary place can become home and first love can feel eternal – even as the knowledge that soon you will have to leave hangs over everything.