Mohamed Kordofani Targets U.S. Bridges with Sudan Trilogy's Second Film

Sudanese filmmaker Mohamed Kordofani will pitch his second feature, "About Love & September Laws," at Rome's MIA Market from Oct. 19-23, armed with a raft of international partners and a stated goal: to "reach even wider audiences" than his Cannes-laurelled debut.

The film is the second installment in a planned trilogy on Sudan's modern history. Klozium Studios, the outfit Kordofani launched in 2020 with "Goodbye Julia" co-producer Khalid Awad, produces. The core creative team behind the debut reunites: co-producers Marc Irmer of France's Dolce Vita, Michael Henrichs of Germany's DGS and Issraa Elkogali of Sweden's RiverFlower, alongside cinematographer Pierre De Villiers, editor Heba Osman, sound designer Rana Eid and co-writer Khaled Alwaleed.

Set in 1983, the drama follows Carter, an African American journalist and former Black Panther who arrives in Khartoum to revive a struggling newspaper. There he reconnects with Nouri, an idealistic doctor he has not seen in 10 years. Carter falls for Fatin, his newly hired translator, unaware she is Nouri's ex-wife. The romance collides with politics when Sharia law is imposed across Sudan, and Nouri faces the death sentence after refusing a court order to amputate a thief's hand.

What does the film mean to Kordofani?

"It's a story about three people who are entangled in different kinds of love," the director told Variety ahead of MIA. Like "Goodbye Julia," which was set in Khartoum in the six years before South Sudan's 2011 secession, the new film aims to "bridge the personal and the political, the local and the global, the past and the present," he said.

Carter is a disillusioned reporter who has "lost faith in bigger causes and bigger movements," Kordofani said. Nouri serves as his ideological counterpoint. "There's this clash of personalities," the director said, describing the project as a "moral drama" in which "slowly, the politics will seep into their story and guide how the story unfolds."

Why the push for U.S. partners now?

Kordofani's debut made history. "Goodbye Julia" became the first Sudanese feature in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, premiered in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, and won the section's Freedom Prize plus 65 other international plaudits, including audience awards at El Gouna and Singapore. Lupita N'yongo, an Academy Award winner, executive produced. Variety's Jessica Kiang praised the "engrossing" drama as a "well-performed deep cut into Sudan's recent history [that] unfolds like a morality thriller."

Yet the film struggled to break into the U.S. and U.K. markets. "Even before 'Goodbye Julia,' I've always wanted to make films that are for the mainstream but still hold artistic value, educational value — [sharing] something about my country that people don't know," Kordofani 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."

In Rome, "About Love & September Laws" is among 12 projects in MIA's Film Co-Production Market. It arrives with momentum: last December, it won a trio of prizes at the Red Sea Film Festival's industry Souk Awards. Kordofani said he is particularly "looking for partners that can [build a] bridge to the United States."

"It's a film with an American lead. It's predominantly English. I think, in the development stage, I should start building these bridges, not only for casting but also for the journey of the film and presenting the film [to a U.S. audience]," he said.

A director in exile

Kordofani, winner of Variety's MENA Talent of the Year Award in 2023, fled Sudan amid the ongoing war and is now based in Nairobi, where he and Awad run Klozium Studios. "I do feel a responsibility to talk about Sudan," he said.

"Living apart from my family, I continue to…search for purpose through filmmaking," he said. "And especially now, as war rages on, I feel an urgent responsibility to preserve and create our own narrative — before it is stolen, silenced or rewritten by others."

The new film, he added, offers "a platform to engage directly with the Western world, not as an outsider telling Sudan's story, but as someone inviting them into a shared conversation about freedom, sacrifice, love and truth-seeking."

By Marcus Bennett

What happens in Rome this week could determine whether a trilogy about Sudan's modern history reaches the American mainstream its director says it is built for.