Haine

UPC: 715515093712

Studio: Criterion

Summary: While to most outsiders Paris seems the very picture of beauty and civility, France has had a long and unfortunate history of intolerance toward outsiders, and this powerful drama from filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz takes an unblinking look at a racially diverse group of young people trapped in the Parisian economic and social underclass. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), who is Jewish, Hubert (Hubert Kounde), who is Black, and Said (Said Taghmaoui), who is Arabic, are young men from the lower rungs of the French economic ladder; they have no jobs, few prospects, and no productive way to spend their time. They hang out and wander the streets as a way of filling their days and are sometimes caught up in frequent skirmishes between the police and other disaffected youth. One day, a street riot breaks out after police seriously injure an Arab student; the three friends are arrested and questioned, and it is learned that a policeman lost a gun in the chaos. However, what they don't know is that Vinz picked it up and has it in his possession, and when Vinz, Hubert, and Said get into a scuffle with a group of racist skinheads, the circumstances seem poised for tragedy. Actress Jodie Foster was so impressed with La Haine when she saw it at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival that she helped to arrange American distribution for the film through her production company, Egg Pictures. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Category: Drama

Awards: Best Picture – French Academy of Cinema Best Editing – French Academy of Cinema Best Editing – French Academy of Cinema Best Young European Film – European Film Academy Best Director – Cannes Film Festival

Features: Audio Commentary by Kassovitz and Introduction by actor Jodie Foster
Ten Years of "La haine," a documentary that brings together cast and crew a decade after the film's landmark release
Featurette on the film's banlieue setting
Production footage
Deleted and extended scenes, each with an afterword by Kassovitz
Gallery of behind-the-scenes photos and Trailers
Plus: a booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau and a 2006 appreciation by filmmaker Costa-Gavras

Haine

Format: Blu-ray

Release Date: 05/08/2012

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Theatre Wide-Screen

Audio: DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1, DHMA null

Runtime: 96 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) French

Subtitles: French

Rebecca Flint Marx

Appropriately filmed in stark black-and-white, La haine takes us to a Paris that cannot be found on a postcard or in a glossy travel brochure. The Eiffel Tower makes only one appearance, as a distant reminder of a society that has no place for the film's alienated protagonists. When it premiered in 1995 at the Cannes Film Festival, this work of 28-year-old Mathieu Kassovitz, who had previously directed Cafe au lait, arrived with the subtlety and impact of a kick to the head. Inspired by such American urban classics as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Do the Right Thing, La haine nevertheless emerged as a work of distinct originality, appropriating its influences to tell a story at once specific and universal. The story's racial and socio-economic tensions are exposed with an unapologetic, in-your-face brutality devoid of the romanticism that often plagues films about life in the "hood;" Kassovitz is more interested in uncovering his protagonists' frailties than idealizing them. Their anger is justified and treated with sympathy, but they are held responsible for their reactions to it. The tragedy that concludes the film does not allow anyone to escape unscathed, a jarring reminder that, as long as racism and other forms of social repression are permitted to exist, we are all both its perpetrators and its ultimate victims. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Karin Viard  Actor 
Andrée Damant  Actor 
Joseph Momo  Actor 
Marc Duret  Actor 
Felicite Wouassi  Actor 
Vincent Lindon  Actor 
Philippe Nahon  Actor 
Mathieu Kassovitz  Actor 
Christophe Rossignon  Actor 
Benoît Magimel  Actor 
Francois Toumarkine  Actor 
Peter Kassovitz  Actor 
Mathieu Kassovitz  Director 
Mathieu Kassovitz  Screenwriter 
Christophe Rossignon  Executive Producer 
Christophe Rossignon  Producer 
Gilles Sacuto  Producer 
Vincent Cassel  Actor 
Hubert Kounde  Actor 
Saïd Taghmaoui  Actor 
Francois Levantal  Actor 
Edouard Montoute  Actor 
Karim Belkhadra  Actor 

Country: France