Goodbye Julia © DR
Goodbye Julia, Mohamed Kordofani’s gesture of reconciliation.
An aeronautical engineer by training, Mohamed Kordofani left it all behind to open his own production studio. At the same time, the filmmaker worked on his first feature film, Goodbye Julia, which, screened at Un Certain Regard, is the first Sudanese film to feature in the Official Selection. This drama about guilt examines the relationship between Sudanese from the north and those from the south.
On the eve of the division of Sudan, Mona (Eiman Yousif), a former singer from North Sudan, seeks to redeem herself after having accidentally caused the death of a South Sudanese man, by hiring his wife Julia (Siran Riak) as a domestic servant. Unable to confess her crime, Mona decides to leave the past behind her and adapt to this new situation.
Mohamed Kordofani makes an appeal for a rapprochement between Sudan, his country, and South Sudan, which became independent in 2011. Undermined by racism, war and political instability, relations between the two countries remain quite tense today. Goodbye Julia brings citizens from the two countries to the same table, brought together by a drama that affects them each differently.
“It’s a call to maintain the unity of what remains of Sudan.”
Portraits of strong women like Mona and Julia accompany the film’s political message. Through their everyday lives, a panorama of themes is explored: guilt, revelations, injustice, the weight of the patriarchy and conservatism, and more. Preoccupations that resonate not only in Sudan but also in the rest of the world.
