La Haine (1995)[The Criterion Collection #381]
2xDVD9 | ISO | NTSC 16:9 (720 x 480) | Artwork | 01:38:22 | 14,53 Gb
Audio: French - AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps and AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps; English commentary track | Subtitles: English
Genre: Crime, Drama | 8 wins & 11 nominations | Black & White | France
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 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 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.