How 90s cult film La Haine reflects a divided France

As a new hip-hop musical adaptation of the French cult classic premieres in Paris, the film’s director, Mathieu Kassowitz, talks about the issues that inspired it – and that unfortunately remain.

Just a week after Mathieu Kassovitz announced on social media that he was working on a musical adaptation of his 1995 film La Haine, 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk was shot and killed by a police officer in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre. The event, which sparked demonstrations and riots across France last summer, was a shocking reminder of the murder that inspired La Haine in the first place.

Thirty years earlier, in 1993, 17-year-old Zairian immigrant Makomé M’Bowolé was shot dead by a police officer while in custody. Kassovitz began writing the film shortly after M’Bowolé’s death. La Haine follows three friends, Hubert, Vinz and Saïd, as they roam the streets of Paris and the suburb of Chanteloup-les-Vignes in the 24 hours following a police beating that left a young man in hospital. The trio incorporates the phrase black-white beur (black-white-Arabic), which celebrates France’s multiculturalism, echoing the blue-white-red of the French flag.

Shot in black and white and borrowed from Scarface and Taxi Driver, La Haine was a rare account of life in the deprived French region. banlieuesand became an immediate critical and box office success. Kassovitz, then just 27, won the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival. “It’s considered one of the first major, or at least highly visible, films to tell a story about people living in poor, working-class suburbs, and it also puts the issue of police brutality at its center,” says Rokhaya Diallo. , journalist and filmmaker who grew up in the working-class 19th arrondissement of Paris and has written extensively about racism.

As the film approaches its 30th anniversary, a hip-hop musical adaptation or “urban opera” of La Haine premieres in Paris this week, before the French tour, and features around 15 songs from some of the biggest names in the French rap scene. The song was composed by French producer Proof, who has worked with artists such as electronic duo The Blaze, Matthieu Chedid, Gipsy Kings and pianist Sofiane Pamart. “I wrote the film with the narrative dynamism of a musical in mind, based on a series of paintings,” Kassovitz told the BBC, “so this stage adaptation felt like the right format at the right time.” Thirty years ago he was heavily influenced by hip-hop and the film features much of this including a famous scene in which French DJ Cut Killer mixes American rapper KRS-One’s Sound of da Police with Edith Piaf’s Non je ne regret rien so hip-hop seemed appropriate for the new musical. The time seemed appropriate for the film to also have a new lease of life. “I could see its mark on society, which spans countries and generations with an issue that unfortunately is still relevant today,” he says.

It is this relevance – the perceived lack of political change regarding police brutality – that has haunted La Haine for decades. ONE relaunch of the film 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.”

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 poll found 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, la haine costume (hate breeds hate).”

Emmanuel Macron’s government has moved to the right on security, identity and immigration, passing a controversial immigration bill 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.”

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.

One cultural shift of the last 30 years is that rap – which was booming at the time La Haine was released and was a major driving force behind the film – is now by far the dominant musical genre in the country (the France is the second largest rap music market in the world after the USA). However, rap along with R&B and Afrobeats – genres originating from working-class neighborhoods – are often shunned by the music industry establishment. Aya Nakamura, the most listened to French-speaking artist in the world, who grew up in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, was snubbed by major music awards until this year, and it was victim of racist attacks after rumors suggested she would perform at the Olympics opening ceremony. She silenced her critics when she finally performed at the ceremony in front of the Institute de France (which houses the Académie française). She sang a medley of her own songs and For me formidable by Charles Aznavour – a song in French about love crossing linguistic borders.

“For the establishment, for those linked to a kind of conservatism, it is an unwanted and undesirable cultural trend,” says Benlagha. “But this is the dominant culture, so even if they want to make it invisible, the numbers, the data, are there.”

Making music a main character in the musical, alongside Vinz, Hubert and Saïd – now played by a new generation of actors who grew up with the film – could also be an opportunity to show the strength and versatility of the genre, at the same time that appeals to a wide audience. public. Despite his unclear opinions, Kassovitz and his team see the upcoming show as a way to continue to participate in the debate. “I hope that just because they laughed and sang for two hours doesn’t make people forget why the show exists,” says Kassovitz. “The fight continues.”