The Bombshell

Corsica, 1993. Seventeen-year-old Séverine Guimard has always felt destined for fame. Beautiful, charismatic, and able to seduce whomever she pleases, the daughter of the French Prefect of Corsica and an American poet knows in her heart that it‘s only a matter of time before she‘ll escape this provincial island for Hollywood‘s glimmering lights. Until then, she‘ll pass the time listening to "What is Love" on her Walkman, smoking cigarettes, and riding her bike at dusk along the picturesque roads that wind around her parents‘ gated villa. That is until one such evening ride when three masked men emerge from an idling car, tear her from her bike, duct tape her mouth and wrists, and ferry her in the trunk to a safehouse somewhere in the island‘s remote interior. For days, Séverine listens from a locked closet as the three men-Bruno, Tittu, and Petru: a cell of militant Corsican separatists calling themselves Soffiu di Libertá-fail to successfully negotiate her full ransom of five million francs and the release of a former comrade currently being held as a political prisoner. Left to make good on their threat to kill their hostage, the men ultimately balk at hurting the headstrong girl who has slowly begun to win their affection. Instead, Bruno, the handsome young leader of the cell, puts Séverine‘s flair for the spotlight to use. Force-fed a diet of Fanon and Marx, she relays scripted communiques to her parents and the French media, citing her newfound sympathy for an independent Corsica and imploring them to give in to her kidnappers‘ demands. What follows is a summer of passion and terror, as Séverine‘s radical indoctrination for a global TV audience becomes the most life-or-death dramatic role of her young life...