A Prophet: Audiard's Prison as a University of Crime

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Most prison films are about survival. A Prophet is about tuition fees. Jacques Audiard’s 2009 film follows Malik El Djebena, a nineteen-year-old French-Algerian who arrives at a French penitentiary with a six-year sentence, no family visiting, no reading skills worth the name, and no protection. He leaves — over the length of the film, in real time that feels like an apprenticeship — as the most dangerous man in the building. What happens between those two points is one of the great screen educations, and Audiard shoots it as exactly that: a curriculum, delivered under duress, in a place designed to teach nobody anything.

Tahar Rahim - vo.rs

A Prophet: Audiard's Prison as a University of Crime