{"id":636207,"date":"2026-10-20T10:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T10:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636207\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T10:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T10:50:10","slug":"sudanese-director-mohamed-kordofani-on-about-love-september-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636207\/","title":{"rendered":"Sudanese Director Mohamed Kordofani on ‘About Love & September Laws’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSudanese filmmaker Mohamed Kordofani<\/a>, whose debut feature \u201cGoodbye Julia\u201d premiered in Cannes\u2019 Un Certain Regard sidebar, has attracted a raft of partners for his follow-up \u201cAbout Love & September Laws,\u201d which he\u2019ll be taking to Rome\u2019s MIA Market, running from Oct. 19-23.<\/p>\n

\n\tProduced by Klozium Studios, the production outfit he launched in 2020 with \u201cGoodbye Julia\u201d co-producer Khalid Awad, the film will reunite the core creative team behind Kordofani\u2019s acclaimed debut, including co-producers Marc Irmer, of France\u2019s Dolce Vita; Michael Henrichs, of German production company DGS; and Issraa Elkogali, of Sweden\u2019s RiverFlower. Also on board are \u201cGoodbye Julia\u201d cinematographer Pierre De Villiers, editor Heba Osman, sound designer Rana Eid and co-writer Khaled Alwaleed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAbout Love & September Laws\u201d is the second installment in a planned trilogy that tells the modern history of Sudan. Set in 1983, it follows an African American journalist, Carter, who arrives in Khartoum on a mission to revive a struggling newspaper. There he reunites with Nouri, an old friend he hasn\u2019t seen in 10 years, now an idealistic doctor who serves as an ideological counterpoint to the jaded reporter.<\/p>\n

\n\tThings grow complicated when Carter falls for Fatin, his newly hired translator, unaware that she is Nouri\u2019s ex-wife. The fragile romance collides with the sudden weight of politics when Sharia law is imposed across Sudan, and Nouri finds himself facing the death sentence when he refuses a court order to amputate a thief\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Carter uncovers a story that could expose the regime\u2019s hypocrisy and save Nouri\u2019s life, he\u2019s forced to choose between the career he came to rebuild, the friendship that gave him a home in Sudan and a love he is only beginning to realize he can\u2019t afford to lose.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Variety ahead of MIA, Kordofani explains that while \u201cAbout Love & September Laws\u201d is set against the backdrop of a pivotal moment in Sudanese history, at its core \u201cit\u2019s a story about three people who are entangled in different kinds of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director\u2019s groundbreaking debut was the first Sudanese feature to make the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival. Executive produced by Academy Award winner Lupita N\u2019yongo, the film won the Un Certain Regard section\u2019s Freedom Prize along with 65 other international plaudits, including audience awards at El Gouna and Singapore. In a rave review<\/a>, Variety\u2019s Jessica Kiang praised the \u201cengrossing\u201d drama as a \u201cwell-performed deep cut into Sudan\u2019s recent history [that] unfolds like a morality thriller.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs with \u201cGoodbye Julia,\u201d which takes place in Khartoum during the six years prior to the 2011 secession of South Sudan, Kordofani\u2019s latest again looks to \u201cbridge the personal and the political, the local and the global, the past and the present,\u201d he says. However, after his first feature struggled to break into the U.S. and U.K. markets, the director says he\u2019s determined to \u201creach even wider audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEven before \u2018Goodbye Julia,\u2019 I\u2019ve always wanted to make films that are for the mainstream but still hold artistic value, educational value \u2014 [sharing] something about my country that people don\u2019t know,\u201d he says. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cGoodbye Julia\u201d won the Freedom Prize in Cannes\u2019 Un Certain Regard<\/p>\n

\n\tLast December, \u201cAbout Love & September Laws\u201d scooped a trio of prizes at the Red Sea Film Festival\u2019s industry Souk Awards. In Rome, where it\u2019s among the 12 projects taking part in MIA\u2019s Film Co-Production Market, Kordofani said he\u2019s particularly \u201clooking for partners that can [build a] bridge to the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a film with an American lead. It\u2019s 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],\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tCentral to that will be the lead role of Carter, a former Black Panther and disillusioned reporter who\u2019s \u201clost faith in bigger causes and bigger movements,\u201d says Kordofani. Opposite him is Nouri, the idealistic doctor, whose refusal to enforce a Sharia court order puts his life in jeopardy. \u201cThere\u2019s this clash of personalities,\u201d says the director, characterizing the film as a \u201cmoral drama\u201d where \u201cslowly, the politics will seep into their story and guide how the story unfolds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA winner of Variety\u2019s MENA Talent of the Year Award in 2023, Kordofani is among the many Sudanese who were forced to flee the country amid the ongoing war. Now based in Nairobi, where he and Awad have established their production shingle Klozium Studios, he nevertheless feels an obligation to his homeland, saying, \u201cI do feel a responsibility to talk about Sudan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLiving apart from my family, I continue to\u2026search for purpose through filmmaking,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd especially now, as war rages on, I feel an urgent responsibility to preserve and create our own narrative \u2014 before it is stolen, silenced or rewritten by others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAbout Love & September Laws,\u201d he adds, offers \u201ca platform to engage directly with the Western world, not as an outsider telling Sudan\u2019s story, but as someone inviting them into a shared conversation about freedom, sacrifice, love and truth-seeking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sudanese filmmaker Mohamed Kordofani, whose debut feature \u201cGoodbye Julia\u201d premiered in Cannes\u2019 Un Certain Regard sidebar, has attracted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,311894,409,111,139,69,311895],"class_list":["post-636207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-mohamed-kordofani","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rome-mia-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}