As the riots in the poor, crime-ridden Parisian suburbs continue into their ninth day – having now spread to other French cities – I would like to recommend a French film made ten years ago, Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine / Hate. This socially conscious, anti-establishment tale revolves around the drifting lives of three young Parisian outcasts: a Jew (Vincent Cassel), an Arab (Saïd Taghmaoui), and a black man (Hubert Koundé). Despite Kassovitz's hipper-than-thou direction and his tendency to overemphasize the obvious, La Haine is worth a look because of its ever-timely subject matters – racism, poverty, social injustice, intolerance, youthful angst, violence, repression – which may have an immediate French setting but that are in fact universal.
Considering the cross-border threats of riots and crime fueled by poverty and social disenfranchisement; terrorist attacks fueled by intolerance and religious/political fanaticism (among other social ills); global warming and its resulting natural catastrophes fueled by greed and corruption; and potential interspecies pandemics fueled by ignorance and political apathy, only the braindead could still think of Planet Earth as a home inhabited by disparate tribes, and subdivided into first, second, and third compartments.
We all live in one single world, and it's right here. La Haine begins and ends with a warning: if things continue as they are, it's only a matter of time before we experience our own earthly Big Bang – and time is running out fast. But who's listening?
A selection of notable films screening at the American Film Market in Santa Monica, Calif.
Full list of winners at the 2005 Tokyo International Film Festival
List of films submitted to the 2005 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award