وداعاً جوليا

The origin of Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani’s powerful feature debut can be traced back to the days right before February 7th 2011, when it was announced that the country’s south had voted to secede from Sudan. The result of the referendum was a deep cut in the racialised class structure of Khartoum and the new nation of South Sudan was constituted.

Julia, a young woman from the south, lives in the then-unified country's capital with her husband and son; evicted from their home explicitly due to the color of their skin, they are forced to live in a tent. The violence the family faces is brutally underlined in the opening sequence of the film when Mona, a well-to-do, married woman from the north of Sudan, accidentally hits Julia's son with her car. The film’s uneasy resolution serves to powerfully underscore its main premise: These are the realities of racialised classism that have shaped and continue to shape the lives of people living in both North and South Sudan. (ML)