Exciting news this morning as we learn France has sorted through its annual bounty of brilliant films and chosen Jacques Audiard’s knockout Un proph√®te as its official submission for Best Foregin Language Film. Sasha posted the trailer below. Winner of this year’s Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, Un proph√®te is epic every sense of the word. I was lucky enough to see it just last week, and it’s not only my favorite film by my current favorite French director, I’ll venture to say it’s the greatest prison movie ever made. Here’s a rough list of my personal top 10 of the durable genre (prison camps and prison castles count too).
- Un prophète (2009)
- La grande illusion (1937)
- The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
- The Great Escape (1963)
- Empire of the Sun (1987)
- In the Name of the Father (1993)
- Midnight Express (1978)
- Cool Hand Luke (1967)
- Stalag 17 (1953)
- Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
Honorable mention:
- Papillon (1973)
- Escape from New York (1981)
- Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
- Bronson (2009)
- Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)
Audiard’s previous 4 films — See How They Fall (1994), A Self-Made Hero (1996), Read My Lips (2001), and The Beat that My Heart Skipped — have been nominated for a total of 29 C√©sar awards. If you haven’t seen those movies, do yourself a great favor and queue them up for a mini-fest in anticipation of his finest film to date.
5 more stills from Un prophète, after the cut (via flixter.)