It's set in a prison, amid petty crooks, drug dealers and mobsters. But Jacques Audiard's new film was inspired by Hollywood westerns, not gritty police thrillers.

The French filmmaker said Saturday he wanted his penitentiary drama "A Prophet" to be "like 'Liberty Valance' without John Wayne."

"I really wanted to make a genre film ... and to have a big image, rather like a western," said Audiard. "That was my basic idea."

"A Prophet" got a warm reception from journalists at its first Cannes screening and could emerge as a solid contender for key festival prizes.

Its outsider hero is Malik (a riveting Tahar Rahim), a young Frenchman of North African origin who is sent to prison and forced to find a path between its rival gangs, including Muslim inmates and Corsican gangsters.

Tense, brutal and occasionally tender, the film shows Malik's education on the rules of prison life, which turn out to be not so different from those outside.

"Inside and out are both the same thing, and what he gets inside prison he uses afterwards outside," said Audiard, 57, who won acclaim for his last feature, 2005's "The Beat That My Heart Skipped."

Audiard said he sees Malik as the prophet of the film's title, "someone announcing a new prototype of criminality."

The director also said he wanted to avoid making a documentary-style attack on the French prison system and also steer clear of the "archetypes and stereotypes" of U.S. prison dramas.

"We wanted to make Malik a hero, but not Scarface," added screenwriter Thomas Bidegain. "Not a psychopath. ... He has a conscience."

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