When he was just twenty-nine years old, Mathieu Kassovitz took the international film world by storm with LA HAINE (HATE), a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically in the low-income banlieue districts on Paris%u2019s outskirts. Aimlessly whiling away their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)%u2014a Jew, an African, and an Arab%u2014give human faces to France%u2019s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their social marginalization slowly simmering until they reach a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, LA HAINE is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country%u2019s ongoing identity crisis.