A Prophet

A Prophet (Un prophète, 2009) is a French-Italian crime drama from director Jacques Audiard — watch online on iFILM. Malik El Djebena is nineteen, illiterate, and completely alone when he arrives at a French prison run by a tight-knit Corsican gang. He has nothing. That changes.

Niels Arestrup plays Luciani, the Corsican patriarch who puts Malik to work on increasingly dangerous errands — the kind you cannot refuse. Tahir Rahim carries the film almost entirely on his own, tracing how a young man absorbs every lesson the prison offers: reading, Arabic, money, silence. Malik does not survive by choosing sides. He survives by making both sides need him, until the balance quietly shifts. The six-year sentence becomes an education no school could provide.

Jacques Audiard shot the film for around €26 million; it came back with the Grand Prix at Cannes 2009, nine César Awards — including Best Film — and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Stream A Prophet (2009) in full on iFILM.