Radical Films: La Haine

La Haine

France | 1995 | 97 min. | Mathieu Kassovitz

February 6, 2023

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.


Related Event | SIFF Film Talks

Radical Films: Week 4

From the streets of Paris and London to the South Seas, this week will look at films from the ‘80s and ‘90s that revealed the lives of marginalized people.

February 8, 2023 @ SIFF Film Center & Zoom Webinar


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.

  • Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
  • Principal Cast: Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui
  • Country: France
  • Year: 1995
  • Running Time: 97 min.
  • Producer: Christophe Rossignon
  • Screenplay: Mathieu Kassovitz
  • Cinematographers: Pierre Aïm
  • Editors: Mathieu Kassovitz, Scott Stevenson
  • Language: French
  • Has Subtitles: Yes
  • US Distributor: Janus Films