City Khartoum Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Bruce Haring pmc-editorial-managerCameron Bailey and Joana Vicente, the co-heads of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) have called for the immediate release of documentary filmmaker hajooj kuka.He, along with four other artists (Duaa Tarig Mohamed Ahmed, Abdel Rahman Mohamed Hamdan, Ayman Khalaf Allah Mohamed Ahmed, and Ahmed Elsadig Ahmed Hammad), have been jailed for two months in Khartoum following an attack on the Civic Lab, where they were creating  art for community

Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated documentary Four Daughters and Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani’s Lupita Nyong’o-EPed drama Goodbye Julia lead the nominations in the eighth edition of the Critics Awards for Arab Films.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor When writer-director Mohamed Kordofani first conceived of the film “Goodbye Julia,” he realized that he didn’t have a single friend from South Sudan — “and there are millions who live in Khartoum.” Now he has hundreds, he tells Variety. The first Sudanese film to premiere in the Un Certain Regard sidebar in Cannes, his debut feature won the Prix de la Liberté and is now the official Sudanese entry for the Academy Awards, with Lupita Nyong’o on board as an executive producer. The film had its Middle East and North Africa premiere this week at El Gouna Film Festival, where Kordofani was awarded the Variety MENA Region Talent Award.

Lupita Nyong’o has joined Goodbye Julia, Sudan’s entry for this year’s Best International feature race at the Oscars, as an executive producer.

Mohamed Kordofani’s Khartoum-set drama made history at Cannes earlier this year as the first Sudanese feature to play in the festival across its 76 editions.

EXCLUSIVE: Carmen Jaquier and Mohamed Kordofani, a pair of fast-rising international filmmakers whose respective films Thunder and Goodbye Julia have both recently been submitted for International Feature Oscar consideration, have signed with Jewerl Ross at Silent R Management.

Sudan has submitted Mohamed Kordofani’s Khartoum-set drama Goodbye Julia for Best International Feature Film at the 96thAcademy Awards.

Jessica Kiang With conflict currently erupting in Sudan, one could be forgiven for approaching Mohamed Kordofani’s “Goodbye Julia,” which takes place in Khartoum during the six years prior to the 2011 secession of South Sudan, as a worthy, topical history lesson. And it certainly does have merit as a primer for the class, ethnic and religious unrest that besets the troubled state. But what actually transpires is far more engaging, in the vein of Asghar Farhadi, wherein a tight, high-concept moral core unravels into strands of widening, deepening social consequence. Telling the story of a fraught friendship between two very different women, Kordofani’s intelligent, compassionate scripting ensures that the political never overwhelms the personal. Yet it also illuminates just how well the fault lines that divide a nation can map onto the rifts within a human heart divided against itself. 

EXCLUSIVE: Egyptian-U.S. company Ambient Light has acquired North American sales rights for Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani’s Cannes Un Certain Regard title Goodbye Julia.

A Scots mum and her kids can start rebuild their lives after being evacuated from war-torn Sudan after a fundraising appeal raised thousands.

Khartoum-set drama Goodbye Julia will make history in Cannes this year as the first Sudanese film to play in the festival across its 76 editions.

Family members of a Chorlton man will have to do a 22-hour journey from Sudan to Ethiopia to escape the recent coup. Yousif Gamal, 22, has family members visiting Sudan who are currently caught up in the conflict.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani will soon be in Cannes with “Goodbye Julia,” a drama that he says reflects the “systematic racism” that led to the secession of South Sudan in 2011 and is, albeit indirectly, closely connected with the conflict that erupted in the country in April.  The powerful film, which is premiering in Un Certain Regard, marks the first Sudanese feature to bow from the Croisette. But there is an even greater historic significance to “Goodbye Julia,” in which two women – one from the North, the other from the South – are brought together by fate in a complex relationship that attempts to reconcile differences between northern and southern Sudanese communities. It’s the hope that “it can be the start of a movement for reconciliation between all the Sudanese people,” Kordofani says.

Christopher Vourlias On April 14, just hours after the Cannes Film Festival unveiled the full line-up of its 76th edition, Sudanese filmmaker Mohamed Kordofani took to Facebook to express his gratitude for the well wishes pouring in. His debut feature, “Goodbye Julia,” had been selected to world premiere in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, marking the first time a Sudanese film will bow on the Croisette. “I do not know if faith and hard work alone make dreams come true,” he wrote, describing the challenge of making movies in Sudan as an “almost impossible” task. “One needs a little luck and a lot of people’s support and faith.”

Asia Abdelmajid, one of Sudan’s most famous actors, was killed by a stray bullet during crossfire on Wednesday as the violence between Sudan’s army and its paramilitary force continues in the capital city Khartoum.

The UK will run an additional evacuation flight from Port Sudan on Monday (May 1) the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has said.

A Manchester Royal Infirmary doctor trapped in war-torn Sudan says he feels 'betrayed' after he was turned away from an evacuation flight.

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British military flights are preparing to evacuate UK nationals from Sudan after a 72-hour ceasefire was agreed.

The family of a Manchester man trapped in war-torn Sudan have told of their fears as fierce fighting continues to rage. More than 400 people have been killed and 3,500 injured after war broke out in the north east African country.

Violence has spilled into its fifth day in Sudan due to fighting between forces loyal to rival generals after an internationally brokered truce fell apart. It comes after months of escalating tensions between the generals and military unrest after an October 2021 military coup.

Naman Ramachandran Zia Mohyeddin, a British-Pakistani actor known for films “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Immaculate Conception” and the stage version of “A Passage to India,” died on Monday in Karachi. He was 91. Mohyeddin was ill and was on life support in a Karachi hospital, his family said. Mohyeddin was born in Lylallpur (now Faisalabad), British India, in 1931. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in the early 1950s. After theater roles in “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and “Julius Caesar,” Mohyeddin made his West End debut in “A Passage to India” in 1960, where he originated the role of Dr. Aziz.

Sudan documentary maker Hajooj Kuka, a new member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and one of five artists recently jailed in Khartoum, has received a call for an immediate release by the Toronto Film Festival. "Hajooj Kuka is an exceptional filmmaker.