‘Goodbye Julia’ (Mohamed Kordofani) opens with protagonist ‘Mona’ cooking in her large and kept kitchen, making breakfast for both her and her husband. Mona lives in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. This scene begins quite lonely as Mona cuts an onion, with her husband ‘Akram’ only entering the room when Mona calls him in. Despite his presence, there is still a lingering absence in the air.

The two’s breakfast is interrupted as they hear the sound of “Southerners”, the South Sudanese people, rioting occurring outside. The couple rush out to watch them from their balcony. Mona is clearly terrified and watches as their next-door neighbour shoots his gun into the sky. However, the discomfort this scene presents is not the potential danger Mona is in. Rather, it is the distance Mona has to the rioters below her. Whatever danger presents the couple can be solved with Akram locking their gate.

It is the second scene that cements this dissonance. Julia, the second lead, has a different breakfast from Mona, though both are in the same city. Julia lights her stove with matches to boil a kettle, a direct contrast to Mona’s multiple burning of cigarettes with the fire. Julia’s stove is burnt. The noise that disrupts her is not happening below her balcony. Rather, she walks outside the kitchen to find her family’s eviction due to pressure from surrounding residents.

This activity of cooking breakfast, a gendered activity, especially to a Western audience, may be in theory the same, but the reality and action of cooking in this movie is separated by class and race. While Mona may be terrified by the scenes from looking above, Julia is the one who has to continue on with her life. She is the one facing the material conditions of the world below the balcony. Mona is the Northerner, and Julia is the Southerner. The personal may be political, but so is the public.

The movie follows the death of John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. This is made clear with a newsreel, a clear signifier that this film is made for people with an unawareness of the dynamics and tensions of 21st-century Sudan. Goodbye Julia is set between 2005-2011 and follows Northerner Mona, who after not only causing the murder of Southerner Julia’s husband but by hitting Julia’s son Daniel with a car, decides to hire Julia as her maid. Mona spends the rest of the film trying to hide the truth from both her new friend Julia, and her husband Akram.

Sudanese Cinema has been receiving international acclaim in recent years, with the most notable example being You Will Die at Twenty (2019), which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and was awarded Lion of the Future for Best First Feature Film. Goodbye Julia (2023) has also made history, being the first Sudanese film to be included in the Un Certain Regard lineup at the Cannes Film Festival.

The director, Mohamed Kordofani is a Northern citizen of Sudan himself and conceptualised the idea of the character of Mona when he began studying his PhD outside of Sudan. Kordofani is a believer in the personal is political, which is made quite clear in the film, with the majority of the racial tensions occurring within the house. What is more personal than the domestic? Julia is the maid, entirely at the behest of both Mona’s and Akram’s desire and will for her and her son’s livelihood, shelter, and education. Mona is the woman of the house. Mona may exercise power when it comes to the domestic, but must still answer to Akram, who uses slurs in private when referring to Julia and Daniel.

It is of course, difficult to watch this film in 2024, and not consider the current genocide occurring in Sudan that began after the film’s festival release. While this film is situated between 2003-2011, to watch this film in 2024, with the knowledge that 6.7 million Sudanese people are at risk of gendered violence, makes it difficult to stomach. Mona’s own relationship and reason for staying with Akram in particular is more tense in this context. The 2024 lens also makes the film’s politics with the racial and ethnic dynamics at play, harder to consider, especially as this film clearly serves to educate a Western audience member such as myself.

As this film exists to be political, it only serves to consider this film on its politics, within the context of which it was made. This is ultimately a movie about Mona, the woman with the most power, and guilt, and as such explores the guilt of the ‘elite’ woman in her patriarchal world. Each decision made by Mona is the driving force of the film’s narrative. While different descriptions of the film discuss an ‘unlikely friendship’ that develops between Mona and Julia, the friendship can only be described as transactional, a friendship really about who can get what from each other. It is of course Mona who has the upper hand.

Mona gets to assuage her guilt by hiring and financially supporting Julia and her son. While Julia is able to gain access to a new world through her and her son’s education, she is at risk of overreliance on Mona. Mona does suffer from patriarchy in the private, but why wouldn’t Julia also experience this as a woman herself? She certainly experiences the racism towards Southerners in the late 2000s Sudan’s public.

It is the final scene that drives this theme home. After Julia is fired from the house following the film’s climax, she looks for a new place with her and her son after the 2011 Referendum. Mona is lost without Julia and tries to seek support following her and Akram’s divorce, begging for forgiveness for being the reason for her husband’s death. It is here, that Mona leans on Julia’s lap, seeking comfort, to which Julia hesitantly offers. Despite Mona thinking she has progressed, and that she has become more open-minded, it is still herself that that she centres in this moment, and not Julia. After all, Julia was the one who lost her husband and her life, all because of Mona’s own prejudice.

This spelling out of the dynamics makes it clear that Goodbye Julia is made for a Western audience. This is not to discredit the film, I am aware that the chosen representatives of national cinema have to be slightly self-reflective, and explanatory whilst also being limited in its personal critique of the country of origin. Just look at most of Australia’s failed attempts to get an international best Oscar nom. Though, I do wonder what has been lost in the process, from the nuances of certain words in the script not being able to be adequately translated, and more of Julia’s perspective shining through. We all know a Mona, maybe we are a Mona, but I want to see more of Julias.