GOODBYE JULIA

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Storyline (warning: spoilers)

Goodbye Julia is the first feature film to be made in Sudan to be submitted to Cannes (where it won the Prix de la Liberté award). A beautifully shot drama, it gives Western audiences a glimpse of life in a country that we normally only see in news reports and documentaries.
Writer-director Mohamed Kordofani has created an intricate story of friendships and betrayals which works as an intimate drama while also subtly giving us an insight into the divisions between the people of north and south Sudan that led to the country’s division in 2011.
The singer/actress Eiman Yousif plays Mona, whose husband, a wealthy Northerner, kills a delivery man in a fit of pique and then covers up his death. Mona, suffering guilt for her part in the crime, seeks out Julia (Siran Riak), the delivery man's unknowing widow and young child and invites them to come and live at her and her husband's house in Khartoum and work for her.
A troubled friendship develops between the two women, both trapped by social restrictions around gender, religion and race. Mona has been forced to give up her singing career as it’s not deemed seemly by her autocratic husband; her failure to fall pregnant threatens the marriage.
Meanwhile Julia is in limbo, not knowing what has happened to her husband or what the future holds for herself and her daughter. There are elements of a thriller here and Kordofani keeps up the pace throughout, aided by a dramatic score by Sudanese musician and activist Mazin Hamid and excellent camerawork. Eiman Yousif, a Sudanese fashion model who had never acted before, is totally convincing as Julia. Over the course of the narrative, she matures into a woman prepared to challenge the racism Northern Sudanese people have displayed to Southerners. Kordofani tries to tie up a few too many loose ends in the third act but this doesn’t detract from the overall impact of Goodbye Julia.