Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, blistering crime drama A Prophet demonstrates Jacques Audiard's ability to rise beyond a genre to exceptional heights of emotional intensity. Malik (Rahim) lands himself in jail at 19.

After a violent crash course in the ways of the ruling gang, he slowly begins, through his self-education, to challenge the prison power structures.

And as the long years of his sentence roll on, he uses his ruthless cunning to establish himself as a major new player.

A Prophet moves fluidly from arthouse subtlety to genre pyrotechnics in an endlessly powerful and absorbing tapestry of criminal life, which has all the epic human drama of such classics as Scarface and The Godfather.

A Prophet is showing at Harbour Lights Picturehouse.

Box office: 0871 704 2060