The Kingdom is a French drama film directed by Julien Colonna, co-written with Jeanne Herry. It was released in theaters on November 13, 2024, and becomes available on Netflix starting February 13, 2026. Led by Ghjuvanna Benedetti, Saveriu Santucci, and Anthony Morganti, this debut feature film was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. It marks a recent movement in Corsican cinema, following in the footsteps of Thierry de Peretti's A Son Image.
Corsica, 1995. Lesia lives her first teenage summer when a man appears and takes her on a motorcycle ride to a secluded villa hidden in the woods. There, she reunites with her father, who’s hiding out with his men amid a fierce internal conflict within the criminal underworld. The grip tightens around the clan, and the young girl is drawn into a shadowy world driven by fear and loyalty.
Death strikes unexpectedly, forcing father and daughter to run away. This escape in the form of a road movie takes them from hiding spot to hiding spot, from luxurious seaside villas to rundown campgrounds. As danger closes in, a fragile bond begins to form between them—woven through silences, awkwardness, and attempts to protect each other—in a world where childhood is harshly confronted with adult violence.
Julien Colonna envisions his film as an anti-genre movie. Inspired by an intimate reflection on fatherhood sparked by his wife’s pregnancy announcement, the director draws from his own childhood memories to imagine this duo on the run through a wild landscape. Co-written with Jeanne Herry (Pupille, I'll Always See Your Faces), the screenplay adopts a child’s perspective — a choice passionately supported by the director — to depict a parent-child relationship struggling to survive amid a crumbling world.
The film stands out for its predominantly non-professional cast, recruited after eight months of guerrilla-style casting across the island. Ghjuvanna Benedetti and Saveriu Santucci, a farmer and mountain guide in real life, portray this duo with a restraint that enhances the pursuit of naturalism. Filmed on 35mm with a deliberately rough handheld camera and handcrafted lighting — including camping gas lamps for nighttime scenes — the entire production favors silence and expressions over explanatory dialogue.
Far from the usual stereotypes associated with Corsican banditry, the film refuses to glorify its characters. The gang members are presented as already doomed figures, trapped in a fading system. This nuanced approach, which leaves the motives behind their flight a bit ambiguous, shifts the narrative into a coming-of-age story: that of a teenage girl navigating the unspoken rules of a male-dominated world and the silent struggles of a father trying to protect her.
Premier unveiled at Cannes in 2024, Le Royaume was later nominated for the César 2025 for Best First Feature, awarding Julien Colonna and earning Ghjuvanna Benedetti the Lumière Award for Best Breakthrough Female Actor. These accolades highlight the rise of a debut film that marks a fresh chapter in island noir, while also embracing a deeply personal, intimate tone.
Our review of Le Royaume
Each of the two directors has undertaken to portray his vision of the island where he grew up. For Julien Colonna, this takes the form of a gangster film. A fictional work broadly inspired by his personal history, depicting a heart-wrenching father-daughter relationship amid a warring gang landscape soaked in vengeance and death.
Corsica, 1995. Lesia (Ghjuvanna Benedetti) is experiencing her first summer as a teenager, eager to spend it with her boyfriend at the beach. One day, an outsider arrives and takes her on his motorcycle to a secluded villa nestled in the Corsican scrubland, where she finds her father (Saveriu Santucci), in hiding, surrounded by his men. A conflict erupts in the criminal world, tightening the noose around the clan led by her father, who has no choice but to go into hiding.
Darkness looms, death strikes, decimating the players of this high-stakes game with deadly precision in hopes of reaching the king of this realm. What follows is a road-movie-style escape during which father and daughter learn to see, understand, and love each other, moving from hideout to hideout, from seaside villas to shabby campsites.
With its entirely Corsican cast and mostly non-professional actors (Saveriu Santucci is actually a farmer and mountain guide; all deliver performances marked by authentic truthfulness), Le Royaume offers viewers a privileged window into the tense reactions and actions within this high-voltage Corsican clan. Yet, it never slips into voyeuristic folklore.
Perhaps most notably, the film’s narrative choice to adopt a young, female perspective within this male-dominated world—so far removed from traditional codes that the young girl makes naive judgments—stands out. It’s a story of how a young woman carves out her space among the men who overprotect her, transitioning from an almost-initiatory experience of slaughtering a wild boar to the loss of innocence gradually visible in her eyes. Adulthood strikes hard at the door.
At the core of this coming-of-age story, Lesia learns the community’s rules and traditions, uncovering the secrets and silences of her father who, against all odds, tries to shield her. Because behind this crime thriller headed toward its climax, it’s really the father-daughter relationship that touches the core of the story.
"Through this father-daughter relationship, struggling to exist in a context where everything is dying, I wanted to portray the decline of a gangster world in its inevitable, programmed extinction. To depict these men as penitents of their own existence, carrying their crosses until the fall." explains Julien Colonna. It’s hard to say it better.
The Kingdom
Film | 2024
In theaters: November 13, 2024
Streaming on Netflix starting February 13, 2026
Drama | Running time: 1h48
Directed by Julien Colonna | Starring Ghjuvanna Benedetti, Saveriu Santucci, Anthony Morganti
Original title: Le Royaume
Country: France
Blending elements of crime drama with a coming-of-age story, The Realm delves into the collapse of a world seen through the eyes of a teenage girl faced with her father’s escape and legacy. Set against the rugged Corsican wilderness and punctuated by silences laden with meaning, the film offers a pared-down, intimate take on crime storytelling. Now available on streaming platforms following its theatrical run.
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