Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz • 1995 • France
Starring Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui
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 banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly passing 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 marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches 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.
Up Next in The Immigrants
-
La promesse
Directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne • 1996 • Belgium
Starring Jérémie Renier, Olivier Gourmet, Assita OuédraogoLA PROMESSE is the breakthrough feature from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who would go on to become a force in world filmmaking. The brothers brought the unerring eye fo...
-
Le Havre
Directed by Aki Kaurismäki • 2011 • Finland, France
Starring Blondin Miguel, André WilmsIn this warmhearted comic yarn from Aki Kaurismäki, fate throws the young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a kindly old bohemian who shines shoes for a liv...
-
Dheepan
Directed by Jacques Audiard • 2015 • France
Starring Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine VinasithambyWith this Palme d’Or–winning drama, which deftly combines seemingly disparate genres, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard cemented his status as a titan of contemporary world ...
