At a time when the National Assembly is preparing to examine the constitutional bill aimed at granting more autonomy to Corsica, it is instructive to watch the documentary Colonna, a Corsican tragedy. The current legislative process is in fact directly linked to the death, in March 2022, of Yvan Colonna, a Corsican nationalist activist sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of prefect Claude Erignac in Ajaccio, in 1998.
His fatal attack by an Islamist fellow inmate, in the Arles prison where he was serving his sentence, caused strong emotion and an outbreak of violence on his native island. These events pushed the government to initiate discussions with island elected officials which resulted in the text discussed by the deputies from this Tuesday, June 16.
Half a century of history
Co-written by director Agnès Pizzini and by Ariane Chemin, senior reporter at Le Monde, the three-part 45-minute miniseries does not reopen the debate on the guilt of a man tried and convicted three times. Its interest consists of revisiting half a century of the history of a territory marked by demands for autonomy and independence through the journey of Yvan Colonna, born in 1960.
Numerous testimonies shed light on the trajectory of the man who is considered by part of Corsican youth as a martyr. Notably those of leading actors of this period, such as Nicolas Sarkozy, but also those close to him, such as his father, Jean-Hugues Colonna, former socialist deputy for the Alpes-Maritimes. Archive images also recall the immense emotion that gripped Corsica after the assassination of the senior official with three bullets to the back of the head, on February 6, 1998. On the other hand, no member of the Erignac family spoke out.
