This Oscar-nominated and Cannes Grand Prix winning film combines a haunting prison drama, a gripping gangster saga and a powerful personal portrait into an extraordinary entertainment. Filmmaker Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips, The Beat that My Heart Skipped) has made a bold film that uses crime as a metaphor for power and life. New actor Tahar Rahim plays a young French-Arab petty crook who enters prison as a nervous, illiterate, and vulnerable kid, and, using his intelligence and attentiveness, is transformed during his lengthy stay into a savvy master criminal and a mob kingpin. He is taken under the wing of an older Corsican boss (Niels Arestrup, Bourne Ultimatum) who rules the prison, but only if he will attend to some dirty work, otherwise he is a dead man. Thus begins his education.