'I'll Be Gone in June' Review: European and American Sensibilities Collide in a Sensitive, Sharply Sensory Coming-of-Ager

May 20, 2026 2:44am PT

‘I’ll Be Gone in June’ Review: European and American Sensibilities Collide in a Sensitive, Sharply Sensory Coming-of-Ager

The influence of producer Wim Wenders is felt on Katharina Rivilis' eye-catching debut feature, chronicling a German exchange student's life-changing year in New Mexico at the time of 9/11.

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Guy Lodge

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Guy Lodge

Film Critic

@guylodge

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Courtesy of Giulia Schelhas, RoadMovies

The European exchange student, so often a cheaply targeted figure of fun in American high school comedies, gets the leading point of view in “I’ll Be Gone in June,” an intelligent, vividly evocative coming-of-age portrait from promising German freshman director Katharina Rivilis. Following the perspective-shifting travails of a 16-year-old from small-town Germany as she’s deposited in even smaller-town New Mexico for a year, the film covers much expected territory as she grapples with first love, first sex and adolescent social hierarchies — but it’s most compelling on more political matters, given that its protagonist’s year away happens to begin in the summer of 2021, shortly before the 9/11 attacks.

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