The last film of the season, A Prophet, scheduled on 9th December, has been postponed. It will be shown instead on Thursday, 16th. December, in the Seanscoil, starting at 8.15.
(Un prophète)
Audiard has created a long, involved, relentlessly brutal but gripping and thrilling picture; it has the rangy, anecdotal feel of something drawn from real life, but its realism somehow accommodates an eerie supernatural shimmer. Malik has visions which are partly, but apparently only partly, explicable as trauma. The sweat and the machismo are very familiar from the French crime genre, which was revived only recently in the 70s-era Mesrine films. The passing of contraband, the defiant songs and shouts and burning garbage being flung from the high courtyard walls surely also summon up memories of Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers. But the movie has its own muscular originality.
Winner - Grand Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2009
Winner - Best Film, London Film Festival 2009