Audiard proves himself a master storyteller in painting this vivid fresco of a man's life, or rather, of his criminal arc: from a low-level nobody with no prospects to a feared and respected boss. His mastery is not limited to merely depicting an upward trajectory; instead, he delves into the depths of a developing psyche, making prison not just a backdrop but a true existential crucible, a laboratory where identity is forged in the fire of necessity.

The formation of the man, his silent learning, his Darwinian adaptation to the harsh life of incarceration, his ambiguous passivity, his invisible turmoils, his ruthlessness: all elements that gradually compose a vision of dazzling realism, a raw account filmed with sensitivity and a steady hand. Malik el Djebena is not a born criminal, but rather a tabula rasa that the system and its brutal logics inscribe with an alphabet of violence and calculation. His transformation is an organic, almost biological process, where every action, every observation, every act of submission or rebellion contributes to sculpting a new, unpredictable figure, destined to surpass his own tormentors and masters. It is in this metamorphosis that the unsettling power of the title resides: who is the prophet, if not one who, through the crudest experience, comes to foresee and embody a new, ruthless logic of power?

The story is that of Malik el Djebena, a 19-year-old Arab youth incarcerated with a 6-year sentence to serve. Devoid of roots, formal education, and affection, Malik enters a prison universe that is a microcosm of external society, with its rigid ethnic hierarchies, its underground economies, and its inescapable unwritten laws. In the prison world, he will quickly have to adapt to another code of rules if he wants to survive, and the film shows us this adaptation with an almost documentary precision, yet infused with a palpable dramatic tension. The cell becomes a classroom, the yard a battleground, and every inmate a potential master or an enemy.

His adaptability, far from being a simple passive resilience, reveals itself as a sharp form of strategic intelligence. It will lead him under the protection of a Corsican boss, César Luciani, played by a monumental Niels Arestrup, whose magnetic and brutal presence embodies the old order. Malik, with the cunning of the weak studying the strong, will use apparent friendship to clandestinely play a double game, learning languages, criminal strategies, the arts of manipulation and compromise, until he becomes more powerful and feared than his own protector. It is a generational handover, a Darwinian evolution where the old guard gives way to a more agile, quieter, more versatile predator.

Some sequences are striking, such as the killing of the inmate with the razor blade hidden in his mouth: a brutal and unforgettable initiation ritual that marks the definitive loss of innocence and the acceptance of a new, terrifying identity. It is not just an act of violence, but a baptism of blood that fully incorporates Malik into the system, forcing him to confront his capacity to perpetrate evil. The unsettling presence of Reyeb's ghost, his victim, who follows and advises him as if he were a projection of his emerging consciousness or his assimilating subconscious, adds an almost mystical dimension to this raw drama, transforming Malik's journey into a kind of spiritual journey in reverse, through the underworld. This narrative device elevates the film beyond the simple prison genre, inviting us to reflect on the nature of evil, guilt, and survival.

Audiard, with his rigorous aesthetic and direction that is not afraid to delve into the visceral while maintaining an almost surgical lucidity, confirms himself as a filmmaker of rare sensibility. His gaze, never judgmental, rests on Malik's transformation with the curiosity of an anthropologist, offering a profound and disconcerting insight not only into the French prison system but also into power dynamics, integration, and identity in a multicultural society. The film avoids easy moralizations, preferring a raw and unvarnished depiction of reality, where the distinction between victim and tormentor becomes increasingly blurred, and where ambition and the sheer will to survive shape inexorable destinies. A truly remarkable work, which showcases the talent of one of the most interesting directors of the latest generation of French filmmakers, capable of fusing the social realism of the French school with a dramatic tension worthy of great American genre films, while retaining a European and deeply reflective soul. "A Prophet" is not just a prison film; it is a coming-of-age epic, an allegory of power and corruption, a warning about the dark resilience of the human spirit.