Please join us for this film screening and discussion
hosted by the United Nations Association of New York
Goodbye Julia
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Mohamed Kordofani
Director
Ger Duany
Actor and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador
Moderated by
Ann Curry
Journalist and Anchor
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Friday | 17 November 2023 | 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Admission:
UNA Members: $10
Non-Members: $15
Dolby 88 Screening Room
1350 Avenue of the Americas (at West 55th Street)
Lobby Level
New York, NY 10019
2:00 p.m. | Film Screening
4:00 p.m. | Q+A
Screening begins promptly at 2:00 p.m. followed by a Q+A panel discussion
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This event is Sold Out and registration is now CLOSED
STANDBY TICKETS: At 1:50 pm any unclaimed tickets will be sold on a first come first served basis.
GOODBYE JULIA tells the story of two women who represent the complicated relationship and differences between northern and southern Sudanese communities. It takes place in Khartoum during the last years of Sudan as a united country, shortly before the 2011 separation of South Sudan.
Mona, an upper-middle-class retired popular singer from the North, who lives with her husband Akram in a tense marriage, seeks to attenuate her feelings of guilt for causing the death of a Southern man by employing Julia, his unsuspecting widow, as her maid.
Unable to confess her transgressions to Julia, Mona decides to leave the past behind and adjust to a new status quo, unaware that the country's turmoil may find its way into her home and put her face to face with her sins.
Goodbye Julia is a 2023 Sudanese drama and the first feature film directed by Mohamed Kordofani. It is the first film from Sudan ever to be presented in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, when it went on to win that section’s Prix de Liberté (Freedom Prize). In recent news related to this film, the actress Lupita Nyong’o, who made her own feature debut in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, for which she earned a best supporting actress Oscar, has announced that she is backing Sudan’s second-ever international feature film submission for the Oscars after its Cannes premiere (see links below).
In an interview, Kordofani remarked that “the racism that was practiced for many decades from most Northern Arabs, government and people, was a major reason for the southerners choosing to secede. I consider Goodbye Julia a call for reconciliation and a spotlight on the social dynamics that led to the separation of the South."
Reviews of the film have been largely positive, highlighting the film's dramatic storytelling of personal relationships before a wider social and historical background. Writing for Cineuropa, film critic Fabien Lemercier said: "Mohamed Korfani offers up wonderful snapshots, overviews and explanations of all the nuances of the acute Sudanese situation of the time.”
The review in the Hollywood Reporter comments that “Goodbye Julia will bring to life Sudanese issues for audiences. Kordofani’s fine direction balances the film’s multiple modes: It’s a drama, with shades of a thriller and a sense of its own politics. With its classic, accessible style, Goodbye Julia will surely rally more support for the cinema of Sudan, a nation full of stories that need to be told about its past and present.”
Note: the film’s excellent cast includes Ger Duany, a former child soldier from Sudan who became a refugee in Ethiopia and Kenya, and eventually resettled to the United States when he was 15 years old. After building a successful career as an actor and fashion model, Ger starred opposite Reese Witherspoon in The Good Lie, which we presented in our FilmTalk series in 2015.
Please join us for our special afternoon screening of this compassionate, intelligent film which takes us through the many shades of this human drama encompassing remorse and reconciliation, guilt and repentance. Our special guests this evening will include the film’s director Mohamed Kordofani, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Ger Duany, and acclaimed journalist and anchor Ann Curry, who will moderate the discussion.
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Special News Links
• Sudan Selects ‘Goodbye Julia’ for Its Academy Awards Submission for Best International Film
• Lupita Nyong’o to Exec Produce Sudan Drama ‘Goodbye Julia’
Guest Panelists
Mohamed Kordofani
Mohamed Kordofani is a Sudanese aircraft engineer turned filmmaker. He made a number of short films, including NYERKUK, which won the Black Elephant Award for best Sudanese Film and the NAAS Award for best Arab film at Carthage Film Festival in 2017. He is the Co-founder of Klozium Studios; a production house based in Khartoum that provides video production services and supports independent filmmakers and artists. In 2023 Kordofani's debut feature film Goodbye Julia premiered in Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the Prix de la Liberté and also celebrated for being the first-ever Sudanese film to be officially featured in the festival.
Ger Duany
Ger Duany was born in Akobo, South Sudan. He is the fifth child of ten born to mother Nyathak Muon Weng, and father Thabac Duany Wunbiel. He was forcefully recruited as a child soldier during the Second Sudanese Civil War. However, Duany successfully fled to Ethiopia for second a time, at age 14, then to Kenya and finally sought refuge in the United States when he was only sixteen, hence becoming one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Duany made his debut as an actor in the 2004 philosophical comedy film I Heart Huckabees, in which he played a refugee called Stephen Nimieri. Duany was picked for the role because the film's producer and director David O. Russell wanted someone who had endured the real life experience of being a refugee. In 2010, Duany made an uncredited appearance in another Russell film, The Fighter, starring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. He later had a much important role in the 2011 drama Restless City. In 2010, he produced and starred in the documentary Ger: To Be Separate, about his search for his family, after 18 years apart, his long journey from a war child to a refugee to a Hollywood actor and an international model, his return to South Sudan, voting for the first time and celebrating the country's newly acquired independence on July 9, 2011. And in 2014, he appeared alongside other refugees and award-winning Reese Witherspoon in The Good Lie, inspired by the story behind the Lost Boys of Sudan.
Panel Moderator
Ann Curry
Award-winning journalist and photojournalist Ann Curry, a former NBC News Network anchor and international correspondent, has reported on conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Darfur, Congo, the Central African Republic, Serbia, Lebanon, and Israel; on nuclear tensions from North Korea and Iran and on numerous humanitarian disasters. She has contributed groundbreaking journalism on Climate Change, interviewing scientists and native peoples, documenting glacial melt in the Arctic, the Antarctic and on Mount Kilimanjaro. She also first broke the news of Iran's interest in negotiating a nuclear agreement with the outside world.
Ann has conducted a long list of exclusive and news breaking interviews, which have included Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, President Ahmadinejad, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey's President Erdogan; Saddam Hussein's close advisor and Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, Sudan's President Omar Bashir and South Sudan's President Salva Kiir; Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; Chad's President Idriss Deby; as well as U.S. Presidents George Prescott Bush, Bill Clinton, George Walker Bush and Barack Obama and U.S. Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and First Lady Laura Bush, the Dalai Lama, Sir Edmund Hillary, George Clooney, Maya Angelou, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Archbishop Desmond Tutu among many others.
She also reported and executive produced a twelve hour documentary series on PBS, called We’ll Meet Again, about people caught in transformative world events including, World War II, the Holocaust, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Civil Rights movement. She is currently a featured writer for National Geographic Magazine and is also the anchor and executive producer of the upcoming live series, Chasing the Cure.
Ann has won seven national news Emmys and numerous Edward R. Murrow awards, Gracie Allen Awards and National Headliner Awards, as well as numerous humanitarian awards, including from Refugees International, Americares and Save the Children. The award which she personally prizes most is a Medal of Valor from the Simon Wiesenthal Center for her dedication to reporting about genocide.
Watch the official trailer for GOODBYE JULIA
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