La Haine 1995

La Haine

1995 · France · Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz

TenseBleak Great first watch · Easy Social drama

Three friends move through the day after a riot while anger, police pressure, and boredom keep narrowing their options.

What to expect

Kassovitz gives the banlieue both immediacy and formal control. The trio’s humour and movement resist their reduction to a social problem, while the recurring fall metaphor keeps consequence close.

How to ease in

Stay with Vinz, Saïd, and Hubert as a group. Their arguments express different responses to the same pressure, and the day’s geography gradually separates bravado from control.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Contains police brutality, racism, antisemitic and homophobic language, gun violence, riots, and a shocking ending.
Momo's Note Who is Momo? →

Three friends move through the day after a riot while anger, police pressure, and boredom keep narrowing their options.

I hear friendship doing constant repair work between the three men. The jokes keep a day alive that every institution around them seems prepared to waste.

Open the note ↓

I hear friendship doing constant repair work between the three men. The jokes keep a day alive that every institution around them seems prepared to waste.

— Momo

Momo guiding the way into this film

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