01/09/2008

Filming began a week ago on the fifth feature by multi award-winning director Jacques Audiard. Un prophète will recount the criminal rise of a young French-Arab boy who joins the Corsican mafia. Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif, Reda Kateb, Jean-Marc Michelangeli, Hichem Yacoubi, Gilles Cohen, Antoine Basler, Guillaume Verdier and Leila Bekhti will star.

Winner of a César for Best Feature Debut in 1994 with See How They Fall, Best Screenplay at Cannes 1996 with A Self-Made Hero, Audiard notched up nine nominations at the 2001 Césars (along with the title of Best Actress) with Read My Lips [+see also:
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Fine-tuned by the director and Thomas Bidegain, Un prophète – based on an original screenplay by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit – tells the story of 18 year-old Malik El Djebena (Rahim). Malik, illiterate and sentenced to six years in prison, falls under the bad influence of a group of Corsican prisoners. With each mafia mission, Malik toughens up to eventually win the confidence of "boss" César Luciani (Arestrup). Very quickly and discretely, Malik develops his own drug trafficking ring. However, this dangerous double play makes him the godfather of a new mafia, signing up to a special insurance policy that makes donations to mosques but becoming an Arab hero on his release from prison.

Produced by Why Not Productions with Chic Films, Un prophète will shoot for 15 weeks, mainly in the Paris region (Gennevilliers), as well as Marseille, the Var and the Vaucluse.

UGC will release the film domestically in the second half of 2009, while Celluloïd Dreams will manage international sales.

(Translated from French)