Mathieu Kassovitz, 30 years after 'La Haine': "If we didn't have problems with the police, the film wouldn't exist today."

In 2001, when the film Amélie (JP Jeunet) became an international phenomenon, the world was focused solely on actress Audrey Tautou. At her side in the story, however, was the amorous character of Nino, a less popular figure who had already dabbled in acting. At that time, Mathieu Kassovitz (Paris, 1967) had already dazzled critics and audiences with his furious second film, L'oît (1995), the account of the twenty-four hours in the lives of three young people in a marginal and violent neighborhood of Paris.

A still-unknown Vincent Cassel paid homage to Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (Mr. Scorsese, 1976), and his gesture of holding a gun in his hand in front of the mirror became one of the most iconic images of contemporary cinema. In Kassovitz's film, he played a Jewish boy who spends his days wandering around his rough neighborhood, accompanied by Hubert (Hubert Koundé) and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), three friends from different cultural backgrounds but with one thing in common: survival as children of immigrants in a society that draws them into drug trafficking, crime, and police persecution.

All of this was 30 years ago, but after historic events such as the deaths of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor , the arrival of Le Pen or even the recent persecutions by far-right factions in Torre-Pacheco , the work remains fresh, as if time had barely passed over it. "It's a reaction to what happened at the time, you know, what happened to that boy who was killed at the police station, and I just wanted to tell that story," Kassovitz tells El Confidencial, referring to Makome M'Bowole, the 17-year-old boy who died from a gunshot wound to the head in 1993 while detained at a Paris police station.

It's not that history repeats itself, but perhaps life hasn't changed that much. For this reason, the streaming platform Filmin has found it relevant to commemorate Hate , with a remaster of its impeccable black and white, with a special screening at the Atlàntida Mallorca Film Fest on July 30th, and with its addition to the video-on-demand (VOD) platform's catalog starting August 1st . A true celebration for a daring film, which didn't hesitate to point out the cracks that fractured the French Punic system: "It's a political film, so everything revolves around politics. If we didn't already have problems with the police, the film wouldn't exist today," reflects the filmmaker.

One suburb, thousands of stories

Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, Kassovitz doesn't shy away from imbuing his characters with a certain sympathy in his amusing dialogue, as well as the narrative with an experimental formalism typical of youthful anxiety about telling a story differently. The tracking shots , the zooms that play with depth of field, and the ironic jokes between the friends are all part of a common game through which viewers can't help but empathize with these three stray dogs, inhabitants of the margins.

Kassovitz played with the subtlety of his inspirations: the recognizable Scorsese of the 1970s appears from the film's opening minutes. "You're inspired by watching films by other directors. Of course, there's a nod to Scorsese, but there are many works by other directors that I used in this film," the filmmaker enigmatically states, without going into too much detail. What could be said is that Hate not only draws from its past and the context of its time, but has also served as a basis for subsequent filmmakers , who have taken up its mantle to continue telling the story of what was happening in Parisian neighborhoods that tourists don't reach.

“There are so many themes to be covered in the Parisian suburbs,” says Kassovitz, “There are so many films by different directors about the project, about youth in France, and they all have a different approach: love stories, action movies, everything. So I do that, but other people do other things.” Writer-director Ladj Ly, with Les Misérables (2019) and The Undesirables (2023), might well be his most direct disciple , illustrating, in a more contemporary key and with a frenetic camera, the tensions surrounding police charges against emigrants.

After ten years without tackling a new project as a director, Kassovitz, with that persistent taste for trying out different genres, has returned behind the camera for the film The Big War (pending a Spanish title), a general-audience adaptation of the graphic novel by Calvo, Victor Dancette and Jacques Zimmermann about World War II . "It's a live film with digital animals, and it's a reflection on our humanity through that great war," the director has described, admitting that, in some ways, it will also be a work connected to the geopolitical situation .

In addition to Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Kassovitz, the son of filmmaker parents, has been fortunate enough to work with major international directors , such as Michael Haneke, Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, Costa-Gavras, Jacques Audiard , and Luc Besson. Cinema runs naturally in his veins, and although he has been busy recently with his acting career, his return as a director was only a matter of time: "I didn't miss it; otherwise, I would have made a film, but finding the right moment and subject takes time." At 57, Kassovitz continues to walk with foresight, but without abandoning that cinematic joie de vivre .