Goodbye Julia
Take a look in advance
Mona is a wealthy Muslim woman from northern Sudan who gave up her singing career at the behest of her strict husband Akram. She lives in a gated house in a well-to-do neighborhood in the capital Khartoum. Julia (played by top Sudanese model Siran Riyak) lives with her husband Santino and son Daniel, in a slum. The women's paths are not meant to cross. Their social and economic backgrounds differ too immensely for that. Mona is a northerner, from a wealthy Muslim family; Julia is a southerner and a Christian. In Khartoum, where memories of the slave trade have yet to fade, southerners are seen as second-class citizens.
However, fate decides otherwise. Mona...
Mona is a wealthy Muslim woman from northern Sudan who gave up her singing career at the behest of her strict husband Akram. She lives in a gated house in a well-to-do neighborhood in the capital Khartoum. Julia (played by top Sudanese model Siran Riyak) lives with her husband Santino and son Daniel, in a slum. The women's paths are not meant to cross. Their social and economic backgrounds differ too immensely for that. Mona is a northerner, from a wealthy Muslim family; Julia is a southerner and a Christian. In Khartoum, where memories of the slave trade have yet to fade, southerners are seen as second-class citizens.
However, fate decides otherwise. Mona is driving back from a visit to the doctor and is forced by riots to take a detour through the slum. She turns a corner, pays no attention for a moment, and hits Daniel. When Santino comes out to see what happened, Mona panics. She locks the car and drives away, with Santino running after her. On the way, she calls Akram and says she is being chased by a southerner. Akram shoots the advancing Santino before anyone has even exchanged a word. Mona is then tormented by guilt for concealing the true course of events. She tries to clear her conscience by taking Julia and her son Daniel into her home. Across the divisions of rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, north and south, light-skinned and dark-skinned, Mona and Julia become friends. However, there is a time bomb under their friendship.
Goodbye Julia is set in Khartoum during Sudan's last years as a united country, shortly before its secession from South Sudan in 2011. The racism of northern Arabs, government and people, was a major reason for southerners to secede. Although a northern Sudanese himself, Kordofani still deals with the thorny issues of racism and discrimination against southerners. To give this a human face, he used as a setting for this the friendship between two women who are different in every way. The film deals with themes of remorse, compensation, disclosure, admission of guilt and repentance.
Goodbye Julia was an award winner in the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes 2023. It was the first Sudanese film ever screened at the festival.