A Prophet

Release Date: February 12th, 2010

Director: Jacques Audiard

Writer: Thomas Bidegain, Jacques Audiard

Starring: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif, Hichem Yacoubi, Reda Kateb, Jean-Philippe Ricci, Gilles Cohen, Antoine Basler, Leïla Bekhti, Foued Nassah, Jean-Emmanuel Pagni, Frédéric Graziani, Slimane Dazi

Studio: Why Not Productions

Genre: Crime, Drama

Runtime: 2 hours 30 minutes

For some people getting into prison becomes a serious ordeal but for Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) six-year-imprisonment is a chance to rediscover his origins and his identity. The film starts with 19-year-old Malik convicted of an unspecified crime. Battered, shocked and crushed, the young Arab has to undergo his apprenticeship of violence and humiliation. No sooner is he in prison than he's involved by the jail's ruling Corsican gang in committing a murder. The terrified Malik is impatient to get the whole business over with – except that his target, Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), wants to talk, offering the ignorant youth to start making something of himself.

After being killed Reyeb appears in as a ghost to keep his killer friendly company and offer some advice, introducing the elements of black humor into this realistic, extremely hard-bitten story of crime.

Eventually Malik becomes a crafty autodidact in the Corsican mob under Luciani (Niels Arestrup) carrying out a numerous perilous missions.

Whether Malik is a fully formed personality, or an extremely adaptable man not wasting whatever fate throws at him, he possesses the features of a born survivor.

A Prophet is brilliant in detailing the world behind the bars. Moreover Audiard hired former convicts as advisors to deepen the authenticity of the jail experience that would make Malik turn inside out.

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