Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz • 1995 • France
Starring Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui
Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with LA HAINE, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly passing 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 marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches 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.
Up Next in Voices of Protest
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Che: Part One
Directed by Steven Soderbergh • 2008 • United States
Starring Benicio Del Toro, Demian BichirFar from a conventional biopic, Steven Soderbergh’s film about Che Guevara is a fascinating exploration of the revolutionary as icon. Daring in its refusal to make the socialist leader into an easy m...
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Che: Part Two
Directed by Steven Soderbergh • 2008 • United States
Starring Benicio Del Toro, Demian BichirFar from a conventional biopic, Steven Soderbergh’s film about Che Guevara is a fascinating exploration of the revolutionary as icon. Daring in its refusal to make the socialist leader into an easy mart...
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Hunger
Directed by Steve McQueen • 2008 • Ireland, United Kingdom
Starring Michael Fassbender, Stuart Graham, Liam CunninghamWith HUNGER, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history’s most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experie...
