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I’ll Be Gone in June, as seen by Katharina Rivilis
Presented in Un Certain Regard, I’ll Be Gone in June, the German actress and director Katharina Rivilis’s first feature film, reminisces about her time as a student in the United States. Using the character of Franny, a sixteen-year-old student, stuck in Las Cruces, New Mexico, shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the filmmaker delves into this crucial period in her life.
How did this project come about?
I was an exchange student in Las Cruces, New Mexico in 2001. The base for the film was my memories from that time. An exchange year can be such an important and transformative experience. But when you come back home and people ask you about it, you end up just saying something like “Yeah, it was nice”, because you think there is no way anybody could understand. This film is probably a very delayed way of doing that now, even if it is a fictionalized version of my own expérience. At the beginning of the pandemic, I started looking through old photos, letters, a yearbook from that year. It was like stepping into a time machine. With these strong sources of inspiration, the actual writing kind of just poured out of me and the process from first idea to first version of the script went very quickly.
A few words about your cast?
Working with teenagers almost inevitably means working with non-professional actors. I spent three years casting until I found Naomi Cosma (Franny) via a photo on social media, David Flores (Elliott) on a market in Las Cruces, Bianca Dumais (Sam) at a skate park in Las Cruces. The only one I didn’t have to search for was Rebecca Schulz (Ida), who had already acted in my short film Ariana Forever! as a child, several years ago. The cast showed remarkable dedication, even though most had never considered becoming actors. Over time, they grew very close, almost like a family, which echoed the relationships within the film and strengthened its authenticity.
What did you learn or discover while making this film?
The most transformative experience for me was the casting process. I spent a great deal of time speaking with people I met in the street, supermarkets, and asking them to come in for a short casting session. Those encounters gradually began to shape the film itself. Then, I realized the many hidden treasures that surround us every day, within the people around us. If you manage a way, like in these castings, to connect and share honest talks with people, what you can find, as a filmmaker, is often far more complex than anything one could ever invent at a desk. For my next film, I would love to start casting without even having a complete script ready and to work on the development of the film this way.
What would you like the audience to take away from your film?
Even though the time of a film is limited, I hope that at the end of spending two hours in the cinema, you feel as if you had experienced a whole exchange year with Franny. It is a strong feeling that changes something about how you see the world, brings you closer to people you would otherwise not have met. And that becomes valuable as a part of your memory.
What inspired you to become a filmmaker? What are your influences?
I was first drawn to storytelling as a child actor in mostly classical theatre plays and operas. Later, at the age of seventeen, I went to study acting and became a professional actress. Seeing how stories can change the way we look at the world awakened the desire to become a filmmaker myself.
But I was also introduced to cinema through my parents, who often showed me the films of directors such as Fellini, Bergman, and Tarkovsky. One of my strongest memories is a VHS recording of Fanny and Alexander that my mother had taped from television, but it was missing a part of the ending. I watched that incomplete version countless times, having to imagine for myself how the story might conclude. In a way, that experience taught me early on that cinema is most powerful when it lives on inside the viewer’s imagination way after the screening.
Is there a film you would like to share or recommend? And why?
Come and See by Klimov for the overwhelming emotional force with which it portrays the loss of innocence during wartime and the violence of history through the eyes of a child. If you haven’t seen it, you absolutely have to watch it! Especially in a time like today, where war is no longer just a vague and distant memory.
