Athlone Film Club continues its season on Wednesday October 27 in the Dean Crowe Theatre, with the gripping and powerful French crime drama, A Prophet (2009 ).
Directed by Jacques Audiard, A Prophet has wowed critics and audiences worldwide, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
It also won the Best Film Prize at the 2009 London Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Academy Awards.
A French Scarface of sorts, it tells the tale of Malik, a young French Arab, who finds himself in prison with no friends or allies so he goes out of his way to be useful to the dominant Corsican gang and its leader Ceser Luciani. After a gruelling rites-of-passage murder of a new friend, he builds, by slow degrees, a power base of his own.
This astounding prison drama is powerful in the visceral intensity of its conception and delivery. At present no Hollywood director can match Jacques Audiard’s vice-like grip on character-driven action cinema. Time rips by in fingernail-biting anticipation of Malik’s brutally authentic travails.
More exciting than Mesrine, more enthralling than Public Enemies, this is undoubtedly the crime drama of the year.
For further details of Athlone Film Club’s autumn/winter season, log on to www.athlonefilmclub.com or email [email protected].
