‘Still relevant today’: How 90s cult film La Haine reflects a divided France

It is this relevance – the perceived lack of political change regarding police brutality – that has haunted La Haine for decades. The film’s re-release to mark its 25th anniversary coincided with the Black Lives Matter movement protesting the number of deaths at the hands of police officers. After Nahel’s death, the team behind the musical decided to change the film’s subtitle, Jusqu’ici tout va bien (So ​​far, so good), for a more pessimistic expression that reflects the current climate: Jusqu’ici rien n’a change (So ​​far, nothing has changed.) “It was a shock,” producer Farid Benlagha told the BBC. When they started auditioning for the show, people showed up simply to talk about it. “There were people who had never participated in a show or a film, but who came just because they wanted to tell us their personal experiences. police officer bavure (“police mess”, a term used to describe the excessive use of force by the police), and these issues are still not adequately addressed.”

‘Cultural influence’

The problems illustrated in the film seem just as urgent, if not more so, 30 years later. La Haine is returning at a time when racism and xenophobia have seen a sharp rise across the country (a survey revealed that in 2023, reports of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim acts increased by 284% and 29% respectively , while other types of racist acts increased by 21%). For many French people, it is difficult to see the statistics and not think of the phrase said by Hubert, after whom the film is named: “La haine attire la haine (hate breeds hate)”.

Emmanuel Macron’s government has moved to the right on security, identity and immigration, passing a controversial immigration law and suppressing yellow vests protests. However, the long-running debate over police brutality was absent from the country’s early election campaign – which was instead dominated by far-right anti-immigration rhetoric and the cost of living crisis. “Since 1996 these deaths have been documented and counted, and yet no policy has been implemented to prevent them,” says Diallo. In light of this, Kassovitz’s pessimism about cinema and its power to change things should perhaps not be surprising. “I don’t think it’s relevant to make political films anymore,” he told BBC’s Hard Talk in a recent interview. However, in our conversation he provided some nuance. “I still believe in political films, but they’re not as indispensable as they used to be,” he says, adding that “people have better things to do.”

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But what La Haine may have lacked in political impact, it makes up for in cultural influence. As the first major film to illuminate the difficulties of France’s multicultural suburbs, it opened the door to a generation of films about the suburbs, often made by people from those backgrounds. “The difference is that now they (the banlieues) are represented by banlieusards (suburban),” says Kassovitz, who grew up in a filmmaking family in central Paris. One of the most prominent examples of these films is the award-winning Les Miserables (2019), whose director, Ladj Ly, grew up in the Paris suburb of Montfermeil , Cédric Jimenez’s Bac Nord (2020), set in Marseille, similarly highlighted the problems faced by the police, while Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood (2014), Houda Benyamina’s Divines (2016), and Cuties (2020) by Maïmouna Doucouré. a much-needed female perspective that was previously missing.