Goodbye Julia (15)

A chain of events brings two women from across the impenetrable divide within Sudanese society together in this compelling drama.Khartoum, 2005, ex-singer Mona, a Muslim,lives in a gated property with her controlling husband Akram. Julia, a dark-skinned Christian from the south, is a street-seller with a small son Daniel from a shanty town. An inadmissible secret causes Mona to employ Julia as her housekeeper, and the women bond, until the moral dilemma facing Mona unravels. Though it reflects the ethnic, class and religious frictions that led to the secession of South Sudan in 2011, Kordofani’s storytelling turns on the tense but close friendship between women from very different backgrounds.

Freedom Prize, Un Certain Regard,Cannes Film Festival 2023