I'll Be Gone in June

I’ll Be Gone in June deftly transcends its personal end-of-innocence framework to capture a whole country in shellshocked, sometimes ugly transition.

The film effectively becomes a nostalgic glimpse at a teenage way of life that’s almost disappeared, when kids talked to each other and hung out IRL much more and didn’t spend every waking minute with eyes glued to screens. Those were the days.

With this shrewdly spellbinding debut from [Katharina] Rivilis, we may just have come across a promising visionary in our midst.

The emotional accuracy of being a sixteen-year-old in a strange land in I’ll Be Gone in June is so strong that its flaws feel minor. It’s a beautifully evocative film.