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French director Kassovitz was awarded the Palme D’or for Best Director at Cannes 1995, for this film. La Haine (released as Hate in the US) tells the story of a day in the lives of three youngsters, living in a council estate (banlieu) at the outskirts of Paris, in the aftermath of the beating of one of their friends by the police, which had lead to riots and confrontations with the armed forces. The film was shot in black and white, on a very low budget, using many non-professional actors. The scenes are mostly shot on location, in the Parisian suburb of Chanteloup-les-Vignes, with extended use of a hand-held camera, and plenty of stock footage of riots happened in the region in the 10 years preceding the film. The editing is adventurous and dramatic, and this provides a balanced and reliable point of view to the audience, even when the camera point of views are sometimes incongruent.

The setting of this film is a Parisian banlieu, a term loosely meaning suburb, but which in France assumes a different connotation, because the suburbs of Paris are normally inhabited by lower-income citizens,living in affordable blocks of flats and, in those areas, the social unrest is high, also because normally a high number of immigrants or naturalized citizens live there, almost in a ghetto situation.

The movie rides the wave of the atmosphere of social unrest of the early 90’s all over Europe, and especially France, Spain and Italy, and, undoubtedly, a lot of the its success arises from this situation. In those years, many so-called Social Centres appeared, and youngsters started to revolve around them, and be active in politics, especially of a left-wing orientation. And a certain type of socially-engaged art started to become stronger and more organized, and it gained consensus; however, the feature possesses high artistic merits, and its place amongst some of the greatest films is definitely deserved.

As i see it is a very nice and raw portrait of young people from a Paris suburb. The use of black and white is good and gives the movie
a mood of noir, letting you get a good point of view of the selfdestructive and the ‘no-way-out’ feelings of the characters (like that
dialogue with the kid and the celebrity prank). You get a good point about the social diferences and the not-so-good police. The
movie has many layers and is very nice filmed.
I really like the sequence where the dj plays on the window and we became the sound that goes through the neighbourhood.
I love this movie, and i think is a must see. Is mindblowing, the interpretations, the direction, and the story.
You always will remember that the fall is not important, but the landing does.

Absolutely amazing. I thought it was going to be a great movie but I didn’t realize how much I would actually end up liking it. To me, this movie is a cross between “Man Bites Dog” and “City of God”, yet better than both of those (if only by a little bit). The story wraps you up pretty tightly and it seems to walk the line of neorealism and guns. Once the movie starts it will not let up until the very ending. Loved it!

This movie has one of those “whoa” endings. The characters really began to annoy me after a while, but before I started to hate them, they grew up, and I was able to sympathize with them more. So just as I began to like to the characters, their lives really spun out of their control at the very end. The music was really good too.

One thing that really annoyed me though was the translation on the Criterion Collection. In no way am I a speaker of French, but I know who Asterix is; they didn’t need to call him Snoopy in the subtitles. It was stupid.

Documenting the disenfranchised lives of three men on the outskirts of Paris’ homing projects, La Haine invites us into the intriguing flipside of a city commonly associated with fancy restaurants and upscale living, opening us up to an underground of dejected young souls pushed to the sidelines. This initial curiosity is all too soon stunted by a clumsy bluntness, however, unoriginal ideas conveyed in an increasingly unsubtle and on-the-nose manner. Three repulsively unlikable lead characters stand us at an extreme emotional distance, involvement in the goings-on always at a disconnect with the intended immediacy of the action. At the end, it becomes a matter of stylish black and white photography rather than pointed human drama; the flash and the verve leaves our investment in the dust.