France joins the Competition with “A Prophet”
Director Jacques Audiard competes for the Palme d'Or with "A Prophet"
Directed by Jacques
Audiard, winner of the Best Screenplay in 1996 for Un
héros très discret, A
Prophet is the first French film to screen in Competition this year. Malik is a 19-year-old boy from a North African background sentenced to 6 years in prison. There, he falls in with a gang of Corsican inmates and gradually learns how to develop his own sphere of influence and power. Filmmaker Audiard, who received a César award in
2005 for The Beat That My Heart Skipped, wrote his screenplay based on earlier work by Abdel Raouf Dafri, who penned the two-part biopic of the famed 70s French criminal Mesrine and the series La Commune. In fact, the star of this film, Tahar
Rahim, made his breakthrough in that series.
