Prophet, A

aka: Un Prophet
France 2009, 155 minutes
Dir. Jacques Audiard
In French, Arabic, Corsican with English subtitles
Rating: [R18] Violence, offensive language and sex scenes
Genres: Foreign Cinema, Suspense/Crime / Prison, Euro-Crime

Feat. Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif, Hichem Yacoubi, Reda Kateb

Aroview: Dir. Jacques Audiard betters the accomplished storytelling of THE BEAT MY HEART SKIPPED, situating an immersive world of cloistered gangsters and underlings inside the walls of a prison torn between rival Arab and Corsican factions.

Brilliantly carried by newcomer Rahim as a small-time crim whose blended identity – part North African, part French – sees him survive, and eventually manipulate, the brutal jail politics in play during his six year sentence, this is first and foremost a movie adept at the workings of genre cinema, offering a more propulsive gangland narrative to the comparatively unfocused GOMORRAH (also winner of the Cannes Grand Prix). That the film is set in a prison is almost incidental, and indeed its most distinguishing feature is its acute sensitivity towards faceless ethnic subcultures within French society – a unfamiliar, far-reaching perspective that makes Audiard's expert crime thriller that extra bit special.

NZ International Film Festival 2010