"It's extraordinary to have the chance to make a work that lasts over time, a social work whose subject, unfortunately, does not fade": 25 years later, La Haine"Is part of French culture", rejoices its director Mathieu Kassovitz, who is releasing this shocking film in theaters with ever-burning themes, the suburbs and police blunders.
"It's part of people's lives"
“We are all children of La Haine ! If you like French cinema, and all that, you still have a relationship with this film, it's part of people's lives, ”said in an interview with AFP the actor and director, whose career has exploded with the release of this film full of rage, shot in black and white.
Kassovitz, who claims "a pure and hard realism", directed the young Vincent Cassel and two other actors, Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui, for a day against a backdrop of riots after a police blunder.
"La Haine", a play to "solve the problem"
However, “it is not the films that will change the world,” he quipped. And, in fact, a quarter of a century later, the suburbs are still suffering from relegation and the issue of police violence remains burning.
But "you are going to bring your little piece which will allow that, from generation to generation, perhaps in 100 years, in 200 years, or in 100,000 years, we will solve the problem", hopes Mathieu Kassovitz, who notably supports the fight for the "truth" of Assa Traoré, the sister of Adama, a young man who died after his arrest by the gendarmerie in 2016 in Val-d'Oise.
“There will always be police brutality. The only thing is that we have to be aware, we have to remember, we have to learn from our history and that at one point we have to say "enough is enough". This is the landing, ”he adds.
"A new look"
Hate has also made its entry into "pop culture", recognizes the one who is preparing its variation in musical comedy, for next year. Beyond the question of the police, "there is something, I do not know why, universal", rejoices the director and of which "everyone is a little claimed: people of the cinema like people from the street, ”he explains today.
In 1995, the film casts a “new look” on young people from the neighborhoods: “we didn't know all that at the time, there was little media, no Internet. If you wanted to know the suburbs, you had to either go there or listen to what France 2 was telling you in the evening. So the cinema was a learning and reporting medium ”.
"La Haine" entry point for suburban films
A public success with more than two million admissions, La Haine will pave the way for a host of films on working-class neighborhoods and above all for a cinema “made in” the suburbs, the latest brilliant success being “Les Misérables”, by Ladj Li , a relative of Mathieu Kassovitz.
It is not about to stop: "As the subject is not finished and we are still in these shitty problems, it is still more important to tell a social story rather than a story of love, ”he says.
Mathieu Kassovitz has seen his career explode, becoming one of the most prominent personalities in French fiction, for ten years more as an actor. “Today I am what I thought I would be when I was 25 years old,” he says, at 53 years old. He hopes to return to the Bureau of Legends for a new season. "In 2022 or 2021 if we are not too stupid".
Go back behind the camera? “We'll see,” he says, but “cinema has changed a lot, I'm a bit of a dinosaur”. "The problem when you make a film that stays, like that, is that you are very happy to have made a film that stays (but that) we know that we are not going to do better".
Cinema
VIDEO. “Les Misérables”, “La Haine”, “Les Invisibles”… These films which had a real political impact
Society
VIDEO. Mathieu Kassovitz and the police, a complicated story
- Mathieu kassovitz
- Cinema
- Police
- Suburbs