GOODBYE JULIA (F/F) (2023) 

Synopsis

Goodbye Julia tells the story of two women who represent the complicated relationship and differences between northern and southern Sudanese communities. The multi-layered narrative takes place in Khartoum during the last years of Sudan as a united country, shortly before the 2011 separation of South Sudan. Mona, an upper-middle-class former popular singer from the North, who lives with her husband Akram, seeks to attenuate her feelings of guilt for causing the death of a Southern man by employing Julia, his unsuspecting widow, as her maid. Supported by superb cinematography by South African Pierre de Villiers and a moving musical score by Sudanese musician Mazin Hamid recorded during ongoing clashes between the military and civil society in Khartoum, this is an astonishing directorial debut by the largely self-taught filmmaker Mohammed Kordofani. Goodbye Julia is the first film from Sudan ever to be presented in the Cannes Film Festival where it walked away with the prestigious P