My First Summer · reception & legacy

How My First Summer has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

It slipped out quietly during the pandemic after premiering at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2020, then found its real audience later on streaming — helped along once Markella Kavenagh became a familiar face as Nori in The Rings of Power and viewers went digging through her back catalogue.

What's debated

The recurring split is whether its extreme gentleness is the whole point — a sapphic teen romance mercifully free of tragedy-porn — or whether, at a slight 77 minutes, it's almost too soft and low-stakes to leave a mark.

Its footprint

Its sun-dappled Australian-summer imagery made it a fixture of 'soft sapphic films to watch' lists and wlw film Twitter/Tumblr recommendation threads, where it's traded as a comfort watch rather than a talking point.

Where it stands

A quiet Letterboxd niche favourite — beloved within the sapphic coming-of-age micro-canon, largely unknown outside it.