Metrograph

A cinematic Molotov cocktail that was the first onscreen description of life (and death) in Paris’s banlieue housing projects that many French filmgoers had ever seen, La Haine depicts three armed and angry slum kids—Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, and Saïd Taghmaoui—who, following days of rioting after the police’s savage beating of a young man, hit the city streets like ticking time bombs. A breakneck Steadicam journey through the concrete jungles of the suburbs, given an almost lunar desolation by the film’s black-and-white photography, La Haine is a propulsive, volatile, and visceral landmark of ’90s French cinema.

Distributor: Janus Films