Sudanese filmmaker Mohamed Kordofani has done it before — “Goodbye Julia” became the first Sudanese feature ever selected for the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Un Certain Regard Freedom Prize. Now he is aiming even higher with his follow-up, the period drama “About Love & September Laws.”
Kordofani is taking the film to Rome’s MIA Market (October 19-23), where it has been selected for the Film Co-Production Market as one of 12 projects. And this time, he says, he wants the film to travel further than his debut ever did.
About Love & September Laws (Credits: Variety)
A Love Story Set Against Sudan’s Turning Point
The film is the second installment in a planned trilogy telling the modern history of Sudan, set in 1983 as Sharia law is enforced. At its center are three people entangled in different kinds of love: Carter, a disillusioned former Black Panther turned reporter who has lost faith in greater causes; Nouri, an idealistic doctor whose refusal to carry out a Sharia court order puts his life in jeopardy; and a translator caught between them.
Kordofani calls it a “moral drama” where politics slowly seeps into the characters’ personal story — bridging, as he puts it, “the personal and the political, the local and the global, the past and the present.”
Going Bigger This Time
“Goodbye Julia” won over 65 international plaudits, including audience awards at El Gouna and Singapore, with executive producer Lupita Nyong’o on board. But it struggled to break into the U.S. and U.K. markets — and Kordofani is determined the new film will reach wider.
“Even before ‘Goodbye Julia,’ I’ve always wanted to make films that are for the mainstream but still hold artistic value,” he said. “I still want to do the things I want to do, but I want to make the film more accessible. The wider the reach, the better.”
The strategy is already taking shape: the film has an American lead and is predominantly in English. In Rome, Kordofani says he is particularly “looking for partners that can build a bridge to the United States.”
The Team Behind the Debut Returns
The film is produced by Klozium Studios, the outfit Kordofani launched in 2020 with “Goodbye Julia” co-producer Khalid Awad, and it reunites the debut’s core creative team — co-producers Marc Irmer (Dolce Vita, France), Michael Henrichs (DGS, Germany), and Issraa Elkogali (RiverFlower, Sweden), plus cinematographer Pierre De Villiers and editor Heba Osman.
Last December, the project already scooped a trio of prizes at the Red Sea Film Festival’s Souk Awards, including a $25,000 development prize. Now based in Nairobi after fleeing Sudan’s conflict, Kordofani says he still feels a duty to tell his country’s stories. If MIA goes well, the world will be listening.
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Source: Variety — read the full story there.
