Unflinching drama has its place in cinema. This maxim is precisely what Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet,” a film about a young, illiterate Arab man in a French prison who falls under the sway of the Corsican mafia, sets out to prove in a style that is as critical as De Sica’s 1948 neorealist masterpiece, “The Bicycle Thief,” and as gritty as Meirelles and Lund’s 2002 trauma-inducing film, “City of God.”

Receiving filmic accolades at Cannes last year, where it won the Grand Prix award, “A Prophet” draws strong ties to its predecessor in that category, “Gomorrah,” an equally violent meditation on a branch of the Italian mafia. Audiard’s film, however, doesn’t naturalize violence to the point that the audience feels numb to a gunshot to the chest or to a corrupt system of power exploiting the ignorant and/or less fortunate.

“A Prophet” churns, slowly and methodically, from scene to scene as Malik (Tahar Rahim) gets thrown in prison, is introduced to the sage-like Luciani (Niels Arestrup), and begins carrying out a series of so-called missions for the organized crime group. Like any film of such an exceptional quality, though, Malik eschews the little, if any, empathy the audience can bestow upon him as he climbs the power ranks within the jail’s social hierarchy.

To assert this filmic gem’s place in my top ten films of the year would merely graze the extent of veneration it deserves. Audiard himself said that his film’s intentions lie in “creating icons, images for people who don’t have films in movies, like the Arabs in France.” Taking on the postcolonial project, he has succeeded, not only for Arabs, but for systematically excluded people in general.