On it’s release, director Mathieu Kasovitz insisted that La Haine should be interpreted as an anti-police film. In your view, is this the main point of the film?

La Haine is a youth film made in 1995 and is set in the Banlieue, the French equivalent of a British council estate and the centre for crime, gun culture, drugs and extreme poverty. The film centres on 3 youth members of the Banlieue: Vinz, Hubert and Sayid, and looks at their problems from their perspective and their reactions to these problems. This indeed gives the film a strong anti-police message. But I do not believe this to be the central point of the film. I will explore the main point and how it is expressed throughout the film.

The anti-police message is a big part of the film. The kids of the Banlieue blame the system for their misfortunes: poverty, crime and no hope. This is emphasised by an inter-texulisation of Taxi Driver, when Vinz stares in a mirror pretending he has a gun and echoing the “you talkin’ to me” statement of Taxi Driver. This is because the characters of both films are existentially lost and are living in an urban hell. They have no real purpose ...