Goodbye Julia

Film Synopsis

In 2005 the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed the Naivasha peace treaty, bringing to an end Africa’s longest civil war. A war that the Arab Islamist government once labeled as “holy Jihad” against the Christian infidels of the South. The war displaced 2 million southern citizens from their towns. Most of them moved to the capital Khartoum where they mostly worked in manual labor and minimum wage jobs. The agreement gave the southerners the right to self-determination after a six-year transitional period. The South later separated with a whopping 99% votes for independence.
The film begins in July 2005, just 6 months after the signing. When John Garang, the SPLM leader, is killed in a helicopter crash, a wave of violence and riots spark in the capital Khartoum. Many people die from both sides and tension builds. Meanwhile MONA, an upper middle class retired singer from the north, accidentally hits a Southern child with her car and drives away. When the child’s father chases her on his motorbike, she calls her husband AKRAM for help. She only tells him she’s being followed by a Southern man. As soon as she returns home, Akram shoots the chaser dead.
Mona, whose marriage is already struggling, keeps the child accident a secret from Akram. But burdened by guilt and depression, she covertly searches for the victim’s family to offer some compensation. After a brief search, she finds his wife JULIA, a poor lady from the South. While Mona is relieved to know that the child, DANIEL, is still alive, she is unable to admit what really happened to Julia. Instead, she offers her a job to work for her as a housemaid. Julia accepts the offer and moves in with her son to work for the Northern couple.
Mona treats Julia with kindness and registers her in a church-affiliated school for illiterate adults. Despite the dishonestly Mona’s relationship with Julia grows into a friendship, especially as her marriage deteriorates even more. Julia also helps Mona reignite her passion for singing when she introduces her to the church choir. But when Julia meets JOSEPH, a radical separatist SPLM soldier, who is quite taken with her, things turn for the worse. Joseph, who is on a mission to influence the Southerners in Khartoum to vote for independence, uses his military ties to help Julia uncover what really happened to her husband. Mona finds herself forced to make hard decisions to keep everyone around her in the dark.