La Haine (Criterion Collection)

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' outskirts. Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (IRREVERSIBLEs Vincent Cassel), Hubert (THE CONSTANT GARDENERS Hubert Koundi), and Saod (THREE KINGS Saod Taghmaoui) - white, black, and Arab - give human faces to France'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 it's country's ongoing identity crisis.