‘I’ll Be Gone In June’ review: A German exchange student navigates post-9/11 America in modest, engaging debut

Dir/scr: Katharina Rivilis. Germany/Switzerland/US. 2026. 125mins

In sensitive drama I’ll Be Gone In June, a German exchange student arrives in America at a moment in which both she and the country are experiencing a profound identity crisis. Making her feature debut, writer-director Katharina Rivilis casts newcomer Naomi Cosma to play this observant, quietly rebellious teen who faces a period of adjustment when she moves to a New Mexico desert town, her year abroad coinciding with the 9/11 terror attacks. There’s a fragile naturalism to both the performances and the filmmaking, which results in a modest but engaging reflection on self-discovery and home.

There’s a fragile naturalism to both the performances and the filmmaking

Screening in Cannes Un Certain Regard, I’ll Be Gone In June is the follow-up to Rivilis’ 2022 short Rondo, which played in Berlin. This coming-of-age study features no stars, although Wim Wenders’ role as producer will surely help build visibility. Strong reviews and a relatable premise should lead to further festival exposure.

In the late summer of 2001, Franny (Cosma) lands in Las Cruces, New Mexico, meeting her conservative religious host parents (William Lujan and Consuelo Maria Flores) and preparing for school in a foreign country. Wearing midriff-baring T-shirts as a small act of defiance against the conformist locals, the 16-year-old is starting to make friends when the September 11 attacks occur in New York, sending the US in a frightened, reactionary direction. Meanwhile, Franny develops a crush on Elliott (David Flores), a brooding aspiring musician who has a reputation for being a bad boy.

Rivilis was herself an exchange student in Las Cruces, and she has described her understated debut as a fictionalised take on her time in the US. Cinematographer Giulia Schelhas shoots New Mexico with an eye toward its wide-open spaces, the vastness of the dry desert environment amplifying a feeling of emptiness and time standing still. Those certainly are the sentiments enveloping Franny as she begins to clash with her host family, who expect her to respect their stifling Christian beliefs. Tensions arise at school as well after some insensitive classmates jokingly call her a Nazi because of her homeland. 

The 9/11 attacks take place early on in the film, and I’ll Be Gone In June astutely re-creates the paranoia coursing through America in the aftermath. Seen through Franny’s outsider’s eyes, other characters are understandably emotionally shellshocked, but Rivilis pinpoints the ugliness that also started to develop. Franny’s host father teaches her how to shoot a gun — “What if a terrorist comes around the house and I’m not here?,” he asks — one of many nods to the distrust and toxic nationalism that soon sprung up around the nation.

This juxtaposition of Franny’s personal odyssey with the community’s panicked response to 9/11 is I’ll Be Gone In June’s most incisive element. Rivilis’ muted social commentary adds a melancholy quality to what is already a bittersweet examination of a German teenager trying to find her footing. As indicated by the film’s title, Franny will only be in Las Cruces for about a year, and Rivilis fills those months with interludes and episodes, few of them momentous, but each of them contributing to the character’s wayward navigation through common adolescent anxieties.

In her first film role, Cosma exudes an unpolished vulnerability that makes Franny seem, like many adolescents, awkward and unformed. Constantly carrying around a camcorder to record everything she sees, this 16-year-old is suitably naive and impressionable. If Cosma’s lack of acting experience is occasionally apparent, it also fits this teen’s stumbling attempts to become a more poised person.

Rivilis elicits equally raw performances from other members of her young cast, favouring spontaneity over slickness. Perhaps not surprisingly, the results are uneven, with some in the ensemble proving to be less confident than others. And Franny and Elliott’s love story fails to be as compelling as the script’s 9/11 backdrop, although Cosma and Flores (also making his big-screen debut) try to fill in the gaps with a warm, nervous rapport.

What I’ll Be Gone In June does get right is how every teenage romance seems to contain life-or-death stakes, with Rivilis hitting upon a few small cinematic flourishes to visualise Franny’s infatuation with this troublemaker — as well as her fear that he is destined to break her heart.