Mathieu Kassovitz (The Crimson Rivers) took the film world by storm with La haine (Hate), a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieues on Paris's outskirts.Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Irreversible's Vincent Cassel), Hubert (The Constant Gardener's Hubert KoundT), and Sand (Three Kings' Sand Taghmaoui) - white, black, and Arab - give human faces toFrance's immigrant and otherwise marginalized populations, their resentment at their situation simmering until it reaches a boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country's ongoing identity crisis
