Goodbye Julia Unclassified 18+ 120 mins
Viewer Advice: Moderate impact themes.
A moral thriller set against a nation torn in two, which won the inaugural Un Certain Regard Freedom Prize.
Distracted by nearby violence while driving, Mona runs over a young boy. Panicking, she flees, with the boy’s father in hot pursuit. When her husband shoots and kills the man – unaware of the actions precipitating the chase – Mona is distraught yet unwilling to tell the truth. Instead, to assuage her guilt, she hires the dead man’s widow as her live-in maid, and her well-intentioned actions soon become a flashpoint when the tenuous peace between southern Sudanese Christians and northern Sudanese Muslims reaches a critical mass.
Set in Khartoum between 2005 and 2010 – on the tail end of one of the longest civil wars in history and just prior to South Sudanese secession – Goodbye Julia is the first Sudanese film to screen as a Cannes official selection. Engineer turned filmmaker Mohamed Kordofani wrote the story as part of his own journey of coming to terms with, and overcoming, his own biases against Southern Sudanese people. Working with award-winning South African DOP Pierre de Villiers, who elevates every frame with his gorgeous cinematography, and an accomplished cast who imbue their characters with empathy and warmth, Kordofani has crafted an extraordinary debut that handles the divisions of wealth, creed, gender and geography with adroit insight and experience.
“Kordofani’s intelligent, compassionate scripting … illuminates just how well the fault lines that divide a nation can map onto the rifts within a human heart divided against itself.” – Variety
Tickets
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