Movies: The Kingdom (2024) by Julien Colonna: Shadowed Bloodlines in Corsican Vendetta

A Daughter Drawn into the Crime Family

Set in Corsica in 1995, The Kingdom tells the story of 15-year-old Lesia, who suddenly finds herself living with her father Pierre-Paul, a feared mafia boss on the run. Until now, she had been raised largely apart from him, but with vendetta wars raging across the island, Pierre-Paul wants his daughter by his side. What follows is not just a crime story but a portrait of a teenager’s initiation into a violent world she barely understands. Through stolen moments of intimacy—swimming in rivers, whispered conversations, tense family gatherings—Lesia bonds with her father, while at the same time being drawn into the inevitability of blood feuds and inherited violence.

Why to Recommend This Film: A Poignant Thriller with Emotional Core

• A new perspective on mafia cinema — Rather than focusing solely on gangsters and their operations, the film views Corsican crime through the eyes of a teenage daughter, giving it emotional freshness and vulnerability.

• Raw authenticity — Most of the cast are Corsican non-professionals, delivering unpolished but powerful performances that feel deeply rooted in place and culture.

• Personal inspiration — Director Julien Colonna channels his own family background—his father was a figure in Corsican criminal history—infusing the film with emotional honesty rather than sensationalism.

• Critical acclaim — Premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, received César Award nominations, and won prizes at French festivals. This recognition marks it as one of the strongest French debuts of recent years.

Where to watch: https://www.justwatch.com/au/movie/the-kingdom-2024-0 (Australia), https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/the-kingdom-2024-0 (UK), https://www.justwatch.com/fr/film/le-royaume-2024 (France), https://www.justwatch.com/es/pelicula/the-kingdom-2024 (Spain)

Link Review: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/04/the-kingdom-review-an-intensely-exciting-and-absorbing-mob-drama

About movie: https://www.progress.film/de/filmverleih/the-kingdom

What is the Trend Followed: Coming-of-Age in Crime Terrains

• Crime drama reframed through youth — Similar to recent trends in European and world cinema, the film fuses organized crime with coming-of-age stories.

• Regional authenticity — Emphasizes Corsican traditions, landscapes, and dialect instead of relying on generic crime-movie settings.

• Slow-burn tension — Builds suspense gradually, with quieter domestic moments layered against sudden bursts of violence.

Director’s Vision: Filming Blood and Bonding on Ancestral Grounds

• Family history turned fiction — Colonna uses the shadow of his father’s life as inspiration, creating a fictionalized but emotionally grounded tale about inheritance and violence.

• Local casting — By using non-professional Corsican actors, Colonna captured speech patterns, gestures, and rhythms that give the film a lived-in, documentary-like texture.

• Visual symbolism — The opening hunting sequence sets the tone, showing how violence is passed from one generation to the next like a ritual.

• Balancing tenderness and menace — Colonna wanted to depict not only brutality but also the fragile love between father and daughter that exists within a doomed world.

Themes: Loyalty, Inheritance, and the Weight of Violence

• Father-daughter dynamic — At the heart of the film is the bond between Lesia and Pierre-Paul, oscillating between love, mentorship, and the shadow of crime.

• The cycle of vendetta — Violence is not portrayed as choice but as inheritance, an unavoidable destiny passed from father to child.

• Loss of innocence — Lesia’s story is a coming-of-age journey marked not by school or love but by exposure to guns, secrecy, and the logic of revenge.

• Tradition and fatalism — Corsican culture, with its codes of honor and vengeance, weighs heavily on the characters, making them feel trapped in a tragic cycle.

Key Success Factors: Atmosphere, Emotion, and Authenticity

• Natural performances — The cast’s authenticity makes the drama feel almost documentary in its intimacy.

• Regional immersion — Corsica’s mountainous landscapes, rustic houses, and sunlit rivers provide both beauty and menace, becoming a character in the story.

• Narrative control — The film evolves from slow, tender moments into scenes of tension and violence, sustaining suspense throughout.

• Critical recognition — The combination of authenticity, emotional power, and careful pacing has been praised widely, helping it stand out in a crowded genre.

Awards & Nominations: Filial Tragedy Recognized

The Kingdom premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section in 2024. It was nominated for the Camera d’Or for best first film and later for the César Award for Best First Film in France. The film won the Lumières Revelation Award for its young actress and the Claude Chabrol Prize at the Reims Polar International Film Festival, cementing its position as one of the standout European debuts of the year.

Critics Reception: Taut, Poetic, and Fiercely Real

• British critics praised it as “an intensely exciting and absorbing mob drama,” noting how the perspective of a daughter makes the story feel fresh and urgent.

• French press highlighted its balance of fatalism, tragedy, and beauty, describing it as both a crime drama and a Greek tragedy in miniature.

• Film journals compared it to The Sopranos seen through Meadow’s eyes, where the domestic and the criminal overlap seamlessly.

• Overall impression: Reviewers agree that the film is less about mafia operations and more about the human consequences of violence within families, combining tenderness and menace with striking cinematic precision.

Reviews: Elegantly Brutal Coming-of-Age

• Strengths: Powerful father-daughter relationship, authentic local performances, atmosphere steeped in Corsican tradition, and visual poetry.

• Weaknesses: Some viewers may find its pacing too deliberate or the violence understated compared to mainstream crime thrillers.

• Consensus: A bold debut that revitalizes the mafia genre by focusing on family, inheritance, and the loss of innocence.

Release Dates

• World premiere: May 2024 at the Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard).

• French theatrical release: 13 November 2024.

• UK and Ireland release: August 2025.

• Other international releases followed in arthouse circuits across Europe in late 2024 and early 2025.

Movie Trend: Mythic Realism Meets Mafia

The film belongs to the trend of European crime dramas that fuse intimate, mythic storytelling with local traditions. Like recent Italian and French works, it prefers authenticity and familial intimacy over action spectacle, positioning vendetta not as entertainment but as tragic heritage.

Social Trend: Inheritance, Identity, and Generational Trauma

On a broader level, The Kingdom reflects cultural conversations about what children inherit from their parents—be it love, trauma, or violence. The story resonates as a metaphor for generational cycles of anger and vengeance, exploring how identity is shaped by family and tradition in ways both nurturing and destructive.

Final Verdict: A Blood-Tainted Kingdom of Love and Vendetta

The Kingdom is a haunting debut that blends mafia drama with coming-of-age intimacy. Julien Colonna brings his personal connection to Corsican history and crime to the screen with authenticity and emotional depth. The result is a poetic, suspenseful film that explores the fragile bond between a father and daughter while exposing the fatal cycles of violence that define their world. It is both a regional tragedy and a universal story of love, inheritance, and the heavy cost of loyalty.