With a knife in her hand, she approaches the wild boar that the men have just killed, and guts out its entrails without flinching. In real life, Ghjuvanna Benedetti is a young 22-year-old Corsican, volunteer firefighter in Cervione, in the first year of nursing school in Bastia. Carving up wild beasts is not her vocation, but she nevertheless learned to do it for her first role in the cinema. In The Kingdomdirected by Julien Colonna, co-written with Jeanne Herry, she plays Lesia, the daughter of a Corsican gangster who lives in hiding. She can only see him clandestinely, almost always surrounded by his all-male gang, as she should. On screen, his presence is obvious. Julien Colonna was not mistaken. He chose her from their first meeting, when he had already auditioned around forty young girls and he generally refrained from deciding too quickly. But there, he couldn't do otherwise.
Ghjuvanna is a nature that is “fascinating to film”: her intensity, her gaze, her silences. His commitment too, his composure and his determination. Not too difficult, the dismemberment scene? “Not at all, for us August 15 is the opening of the hunt, so I took the opportunity in the village to train. » She still admits to having had some problems with the numerous aquatic scenes. Fish are his phobia. “There, I had to surpass myself. » This uncompromising film on the announced death of the thugocracy on the island makes us experience violence at the level of a child, and shows its rarely mentioned consequences: life on the lookout, permanent threat, fear of betrayal, impossible lightness , early end of innocence… Taking strangers to carry such a delicate subject on their shoulders, the bet was risky, but Julien Colonna took it and succeeded. Saveriu Santucci, who plays Lesia's father, is equally remarkable. As for Ghjuvanna, she can't imagine giving up her nursing studies, but has taken a liking to the pleasure of playing and says she is ready to start again tomorrow. The wild boars have been warned.
The Kingdom, by Julien Colonna, with Ghjuvanna Benedetti, in theaters on November 13.
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