Header image  
French Film Collection  
 
     home
 

La Haine (Criterion Collection)(2 disc)

 

  Written, Edited and Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz

France 1995 / Drama / Urban / 97 min / Black & White / Dolby 2.0 / 1.85:1 Widescreen Anamorphic / NTSC /  In French with Optional English Subtitles

Vincent Cassel , Hubert Kounde, Sa๏d Taghmaoui , Francois Levantal, Edouard Montoute, Karim Belkhadra

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 Kound้), and Sa๏d (Sa๏d 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.

 
       

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
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