A film in the shadow of a father, “Jean-Jé” Colonna, Corsican godfather

It was in the summer of 2023, in the Vallinco region, in Southern Corsica. Around Propriano, the village squares were covered with yellow and black posters: “cinema casting”. “For the feature film The Kingdom, the text said, directed by Julien Colonna and produced by Chi-Fou-Mi Productions, we are looking for women and men between 16 and 80 years old (for beach, swimming pool, bar representation, etc.). »

For the swimming pool scene, filming took place in September, at the Propriano campsite, among oleanders and inflatable alligators. A forty-year-old in a cap and tank top guides the extras who wait in the water: “To my best, you are acting crazy on the mattresses. » The black shadow of the mountains looms in the distance. A few minutes by car, the Miramar, the legendary hotel of the father of the man who shouts “ Cut! » into his megaphone.

Julien Colonna, Jean-Jérôme Colonna, known as “Jean-Jé”. The son, the father. Even if the surname is one of the most common on the island, everyone in Corsica made the link between the young filmmaker and his father, who died on All Saints' Day in 2006, in a car accident. The Drug Enforcement Administration, a powerful American anti-drug agency, saw Jean-Jé as one of the pillars of the “French connection”, before he became the undisputed leader of a criminal clan which ruled the south for thirty years. from Corsica. Eight years before his death, a parliamentary inquiry report made this little balding man with a passing look and sunglasses “the only Corsican godfather” encore “active and influential”.

“Universal subsidiary relationship »

How, when you love cinema, can you miss such a crazy story, that of a father who went on the run twice – the first of which lasted ten years –, that of a son who only meets his father Christmas or during his vacation in Corsica, sometimes for a hunting or fishing trip, most often with his father's henchmen and bodyguards? In The Kingdomit is a young girl, Lesia, who plays the role of the godfather's daughter, played by the excellent Ghjuvanna Benedetti, student nurse and volunteer firefighter in life, also spokesperson for the student collective demanding the truth about the assassination of Yvan Colonna in 2022 and daughter of an independence leader. When the character complains that nothing is said to her, she hears herself respond: “What is said here and what you see, you don’t tell anyone. Neither tomorrow nor in ten years. »

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