Concrete Playground

Jacques Audiard serves up another searing character study of crime with his taut portrait of A Prophet. Following up the beautifully realised The Beat My Heart Skipped, Audiard journeys into the bowels of the French prison system with an illiterate young Arab, Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim). Condemned to a six-year stint for an unnamed crime, Malik falls in with Corsican gangster César Luciani (Niels Arestrup) and pushed to increasingly violent ends in order to survive.

Audiard’s ferocious and fearless filmmaking is being recognised with several award nominations (including a Grand Prix win at Cannes) as well as ubiquitous and prestigious comparisons with The Godfather. A Prophet is 150 minutes of claustrophobic and clawing reality that tears strips off any semblance of ‘rehabilitation.’ As a companion to Jean-François Richet’s epic biography of Jacques Mesrine, Audiard adds a further layer of brutality to the nature of gangsters and the harrowing existence of incarceration.

Email your details to hello@concreteplayground.com.au with A Prophet Giveaway in the subject line for your chance to win one of 20 double passes to a preview screening on Feb 8, 6.30pm at Dendy Newtown.