La haine: Kassovitz vs. Sarkozy
By April 16, 2007
In November 2005, riots spread throughout the suburbs of Paris following the accidental deaths of two teenagers in the poor banlieue district of Clichy-sous-Bois Read more »
- France
- 1995
- 96 minutes
- Black and White
- 1.85:1
- French
- Spine #381
SYNOPSIS: When he was just twenty-nine years old, Mathieu Kassovitz took the international film world by storm with La Haine (Hate), a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically in the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly whiling away their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)—a Jew, an African, and an Arab—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their social marginalization slowly simmering until they reach a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La Haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis.
Cast & CreditsOpen
Cast
| Vinz | Vincent Cassel |
| Hubert | Hubert Koundé |
| Saïd | Saïd Taghmaoui |
| Abdel | Abdel Ahmed Ghili |
Credits
| Director | Mathieu Kassovitz |
| Screenplay | Mathieu Kassovitz |
| Producer | Christophe Rossignon |
| Cinematography | Pierre Aïm |
| Line producer | Gilles Sacuto |
| Associate producers | Adeline Lecallier and Alain Rocca |
| Sound | Vinecent Tulli |
| Editing | Mathieu Kassovitz and Scott Stevenson |
| Art direction | Giuseppe Ponturo |
Disc Features
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET:
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Mathieu Kassovitz
- New English-language audio commentary by Kassovitz
- Video introduction by Jodie Foster
- Optional Dolby Digital 5.1 track
- Ten Years of “La haine,” a new documentary that brings together key cast and crew a decade after the film’s landmark release
- New video featurette on the film’s banlieue setting, including interviews with sociologists Sophie Body-Gendrot, Jeffrey Fagan, and William Kornblum
- Behind-the-scenes footage shot during the film’s production
- Deleted and extended scenes, each featuring a new video afterword by Kassovitz
- Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes photos
- Theatrical trailers
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau and an appreciation by acclaimed filmmaker Costa-Gavras
From the CurrentView the Current »
Film Essays
La haine and after:
Arts, Politics, and the Banlieue
By April 16, 2007
To start on a personal note: I wrote a book about La haine that came out in November 2005, just as the Paris suburbs (banlieue) erupted in an Read more »
