La haine - The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray)

Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with La haine, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)—Jewish, African, and Arab, respectively—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La haine is a landmark of 1990s French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis.

• France
• 97 minutes
• Black & White
• 1.85:1
• French
• Spine #381
• 1995

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

- Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Mathieu Kassovitz, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Audio commentary by Kassovitz
- Introduction by actor Jodie Foster
- Ten Years of “La haine,” a documentary featuring cast and crew members
- Featurette on the film’s banlieue setting
- Production footage
- Deleted and extended scenes, with an afterword by Kassovitz
- Behind-the-scenes photos
- Trailers
- English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau and a 2006 appreciation by filmmaker Costa-Gavras

*Cover by Neil Kellerhouse