La haine is back in the news, partly because of the UK release of Girlhood (review to follow) and partly because of suggestions that a ‘sequel’ of sorts might be considered by writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. An important piece about La haine by Andrew Hussey appeared in the Observer on Sunday May 3rd. La haine (‘Hate’) tells the story of three young men over 20 hours when a police revolver goes missing on their housing block following a protest against police treatment of local youth. The film created a sensation in France on its release and has been re-released at least once. In 1995 the presence of radical Islam was not evident in les cités and would have profoundly changed the film’s narrative– thus the interest in a possible sequel.
In 2000 I wrote a student guide to the film for a ‘York Notes’ series. This has long been out of print but I have used the film several times for student film education screenings since then. In 2012 I updated some of the notes from 2000 and a copy is available here to download:
(This is a 28 page document)
The Case for Global Film 