Kassovitz frames the story in 24 frenetic hours, shoots with a handheld camera in grainy black-and-white, and cuts rapidly from scene to scene and shot to shot, using jarring intertitles to situate the audience. With a stolen cop’s gun and a bottomless well of hatred among them, they set about finding the policeman and teaching him a lesson. One of the most eagerly anticipated films of the festival, La Haine is a brutal, searing indictment of urban strife and police brutality seen through the eyes of a band of teens bent on violence.Īfter a 16-year-old boy is savagely beaten by the police, his housing project pals (Vincent Cassel, Hubert Kounde and Said Taghmaoui), fed up with police brutality, decide to take their revenge on the system. “An unmissable response to an unending emergency.Ten years ago, aged 25, director Mathieu Kassovitz emerged with La Haine to become one of the most celebrated young filmmakers of recent years, his debut feature capturing the directing prize at Cannes. “One of the most nuanced and technically accomplished treatments of race, violence, and the politics of assimilation in recent cinema.” – Slant Magazine “One of the most blisteringly effective pieces of urban cinema ever made.” – The Times “raw, vital and captivating” – Los Angeles Times Few films in recent memory have sparked more heated discussions.”

Richard Peña, series curator: “Mathieu Kassovitz’s stylish and controversial chronicle of a long day and even longer night follows three friends as they travel from their familiar banlieue to the increasingly hostile streets of Paris. Their bristling resentment at their marginalization simmers until it reaches a climactic boiling point.Ī rough-hewn work of beauty, La Haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis.

Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with La Haine, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France-specifically the low-income banlieues on the outskirts of Paris.Īimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of a dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)-a Jew, African, and Arab-personify France’s immigrant populations. Winner of Three César Awards including Best Film Winner of Best Director Award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival With Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui, Abdel Ahmed Ghili

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