«Goodbye Julia», le Soudan rêvé de Mohamed Kordofani • RFI

The film is about transformation, and it's about my transformation, my personal transformation. I can see myself in all the characters. I've written the characters. They were inspired by phases in my life, so the first thing that motivated me to write it was the result of the referendum. It was almost 99% for secession. And to me that was an epiphany. It was a time when I stopped and thought, something is wrong. There's no way a whole nation will want to secede. And when I just stopped and thought about it, it was clear. There was racism between North and South, and I felt like this is not just a North and South issue. This is an issue all over Sudan. Sudan is suffering from tribalism and racism and prejudice and all kinds of things that really push people apart, not bring them together. So I thought I would take myself as an example. I had some inherited racism that I didn't realize until after the referendum result, and I had to work on myself to remove that ingrained racism. It's a constant effort that you have to do, and this is what you see in Muna, what she's trying to do. She discovers that she's racist, and then she works on herself. And then this friendship organically grows between her and Julia. And on the other side, there's also something about the inherited masculinity that we have in my society. That's also something I had to work on, and this is where you see Akram in the story. So yeah, there's a personal side, and then there's also a way, or my attempt, to try to wake up my society before another war breaks. Maybe I was a bit too late. Now there's already a war, but that's why I made this film.