Dir: Julien Colonna | Cast: Ghjuvanna Benedetti, Saveriu Santucci, Anthony Morganti, Andrea Cossu, Fédéric Poggi, Régis Gomez | 2025 108’
The Mediterranean island of Corsica was in the throes of internecine conflict during the nineties and Julienne Colonna brings this all alive in his ‘Godfather’-style debut, a seething slow-burn thriller set in 1995.
The Kingdom centres on one particular mafioso clan who are steeling themselves against other crime gangs and nationalist groups on the sunny island where shady crime lord Pierre-Paul (Saveriu Santucci and his gutsy teenage daughter Lesia (Ghjuvanna Benedetti) is desperate to get a slice of the action often putting herself and her family at risk.
The gutting of a wild boar sets the scene for bloodshed to come but Colonna and his co-writer Jeanne Herry delay the real action until the second act while establishing 15-year-old Lesia’s laidback existence, nearly exclusively from her own view point, going to the beach and seeing a local boy from her village.
Lesia lost her mother years previously so Pierre-Paul is fiercely protective of his only daughter and the two grow increasingly close in his secret villa where a heads-up with his henchmen soon ends in near tragedy: Lesia has become bored staying in seclusion without her boyfriend and makes the faux-pas of calling him from a payphone revealing the gang’s whereabouts, and nearly causing the death by car bomb of a local politician who turns up late to the villa party. Naturally the girl gets her father’s forgiveness, but from then on the gloves are off as a fierce baptism by gently fanned flames ensues for her in this gritty crime affair confidently helmed by the first time director who creates a palpable sense of place amid the craggy hills and pine groves of his native Island.@MeredithTaylor
THE KINGDOM is in UK cinemas from 8th August 2025