Released to both acclaim and consternation at home (it won best director at Cannes but was protested by police for it’s perceived anti police narrative) LA HAINE quickly went on to achieve cult cinema status around the world and made a star of it’s lead Vincent Cassel.

La Haine is gritty and funny, unsettling and beautiful and is as vital today as when it was released in 1995.

Centring on Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) a Jew, an African, and an Arab, who are the personifications of France’s immigrant populations, as they aimlessly pass their days among the concrete and poverty of the banlieue districts on Paris, and their resentment at their situation builds to a cinematic crescendo. 

LA HAINE famously spearheaded a wave of films about the banlieues and opened the door to a new genre of french films among which it remains legendary.