Cult 101: La Haine (1995)
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz Run Time: 98 min. Release Year: 1995
Starring: Abdel Ahmed Ghili, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui, Solo, Vincent Cassel
Country: France
Language: French
Cult 101 at Gateway Film Center
A celebration of the best cult films of all time.
See more Cult 101About the film:
Winner of the 1996 César Award for Best Feature Film.
Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with this 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, Hubert, and Saïd 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 (1995) is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis.
“an unmissable response to an unending emergency.”
—Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
About the filmmaker:
Mathieu Kassovitz is a French director, actor, and screenwriter. Kassovitz began his career working as an assistant director on features, TV productions, commercials and music videos from 1983 to 1988. He then made four short films in the 90s, the earliest of which, Fierrot le pou (1990), went on to win numerous awards. Kassovitz has also starred in a variety of films, including Dir. Jacques Audiard’s See How They Fall (1993) and A Self-Made Hero (1995)—his performance in the latter film earned him a Jean Gabin Prize and the Most Promising Young Actor César— as well as Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie (2000) and Dir. Costa Gavras’ Eyewitness (2001).
His directorial debut Café au Lait (1993) was selected at the Venice Festival, was nominated for Best First Film at the 1994 César Awards, and won the Jury Special Prize at the Paris Film Festival. Afterwards, he directed La Haine (1995), for which he was voted Best Director at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. The film also won a César for Best Feature Film and Best Editing in 1996.
See our upcoming films