La Haine

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Film Description

Kassovitz’s prescient report on the state of France, set in a Paris suburb sometime in the present. Protesting against the police shooting of an Arab boy, rioting erupts throughout the estate and a police revolver goes missing. Shot in grimy monochrome with a wheeling camera which barely contains the anarchy.

Film Information

DVD Extras

2 discs. Commentary by Mathieu Kassovitz; behind the scenes footage; digitally re-mastered; scenes in colour; new subtitles.

Technical Details

Reviews & Articles

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Review by Howard Schumann on 22nd March 2006

Reminiscent of Costas-Gavras' film Z with its rapid-fire dialogue and staccato rhythms, La Haine (Hate) directed by 28 year-old Mathieu Kassovitz, is a passionate look at racial tensions at a Paris housing project. Although drug dealing, urban decay, and police brutality have been shown in films before, rarely have they had the sense of vitality and urgency shown in La Haine. Three friends from different ethnic backgrounds live in the Bluebell housing projects on the outskirts of Paris. The film depicts their rage against the police whom they see as oppressors. Marginalized economically and politically, without jobs or parents who care, the streets are their home and they are open targets for police who are shown as brutal and racist. In one startling scene, a veteran cop taunts and physically abuses Said and Hubert while training a rookie cop. The rookie can only look on and shake his head in disbelief.

Shot in black and white, La Haine shows a single day in the lives of the three friends. Following a major riot in which a local teenager is critically wounded by the police, Vinz vows that if the boy dies he will kill a cop to get even. When he finds a Smith & Wesson 44 lost by the police during the riots, the spiral of violence escalates and builds toward a memorable conclusion. La Haine does not offer any solutions to social problems but clearly shows the anger and frustration of people who feel trapped by their circumstances. It also has immediacy. Three weeks after the film was released, riots broke out in the Brixton section of London, following the death of a young black man in police custody. La Haine makes a powerful statement that violence does not solve anything and that hate begets hate.

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Review by Rena Markogiannaki on 15th May 2006

“Si t’etais alle a l’ecole, tu saurais: La Haine attire La Haine” Don’t you remember what they told us in school? Hate breeds Hate.

Hate was first screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995 where it was awarded the ‘Best Director’ award. It also won Cesar Awards and European Film Awards. The film was written and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. It is an art-house movie that attracted a large audience and became a very popular film inside and outside Europe.

The author’s aim was the illustration of a real event that took place in France in 1993. Thus the initial story of the film came from a real life incident, the shooting of a sixteen-year old Zairian called Makome Bowole.

The death of Makome went unreported and unnoticed. The shooting of Makome had many implications concerning the major social issues that many youngsters were and are going through: unemployment, low grade public housing, immigration, disaffection and policing; more specifically the reality of the housing projects and the urban despair in the suburbs of Paris. Kassovitz wanted to report on the general situation and bring the issues to light.

The first part of the story takes place outside of central Paris, in the suburbs where a policeman has lost his gun during the riots that have been occurring. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), one of the main characters finds it and promises that he will use it to kill a policeman if Abdel, a friend of his who is in a critical state in the hospital as a result of police action, dies. Vinz, Said and Hubert, the leading characters are killing time in Paris and the suburbs on one of the most significant days of their lives.

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