Credits: Lionel Allorge / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 3.0.
Mathieu Kassovitz has never left the margins of French cinema, those where engagement is not a veneer but a foundation. Thirty years after La Haine, his manifesto film on social fractures, the filmmaker returns with a stage adaptation. It is titled La Haine, jusqu’ici rien n’a changé. This reimagining mixes rap, dance, theater, and video projections to rekindle an anger that has remained intact.
The staging is credited to Kassovitz himself with Serge Denoncourt. Choreographies are entrusted to Émilie Capel and Yaman Okur. On stage, Alexander Ferrario, Samy Belkessa, and Alivor portray Vinz, Saïd, and Hubert, respectively. The whole is supported by a contemporary soundtrack, ranging from Oxmo Puccino to Youssoupha, including Akhenaton and Médine.
A Career Tense Between Cinema And Revolt
Born in 1967 in Paris, Mathieu Kassovitz grew up in a household already oriented toward the image. His father, Peter Kassovitz, is a director. His mother, Chantal Rémy, is an editor. He was introduced to cinema very early and quickly moved behind the camera. After Métisse (1993), La Haine revealed him in 1995. The film won the Best Director Award at Cannes and became a milestone of French social cinema.
This success did not divert him from burning issues. With Assassins (1997), L’Ordre et la Morale (2011) and Le Bureau des légendes, he delves into the same themes: systemic violence, power, identity, collective memory. Even his forays into international cinema – Steven Spielberg’s Munich, Costa-Gavras’s Amen. – extend an intellectual coherence.
A Declared Commitment, A Polarizing Discourse
On May 19, 2025, as a guest on the show C à vous broadcasting from Cannes, Kassovitz declared: "There are no longer any native French people." He added: "We must be proud to be one of the most integrated countries in the world. And I hope we will continue to mix."
His remarks were made during the Festival where he presented the musical version of La Haine. They provoked strong reactions on social media. Some saw in them a call to erase national identities, others a simple universalist claim. The phrase was widely quoted, debated, sometimes instrumentalized. When questioned, Kassovitz did not seek to soften it: he considers this fight against racism to be a fundamental issue.
His statement fits a public trajectory where the boundaries between art and politics are porous. He is known for his outspoken voice, often radical, rarely tempered. Like an echo of that cutting remark from his father, Peter Kassovitz, given to the newspaper Le Monde: "My son’s story is that of a guy who would have wanted to be a great Black man even though he is a little white Jew."
An Aesthetic Of Fracture, A Cry Still Audible
The new stage version of La Haine is not nostalgia. It intends to prove that nothing has changed, or hardly. It recalls the death of Makomé M’Bowolé, killed by a police officer in April 1993, which inspired the original screenplay. It places the dialogues in a context of recurring violence, persistent inequalities, and distrust of institutions.
The fourteen tableaux of the play – between filmed fragments and physical performances – weave a link between the 1990s and 2025. Far from being a mere museum piece, the show invites reflection on the social reach of cinema and its power to mobilize.
A Trajectory At The Border Of Art And Debate
Mathieu Kassovitz continues to carve a singular line. His anger and sometimes brutal irony, as well as his nonconformist artistic choices, form his profile. He is a man who keeps his distance from compromises.
His motorcycle accident in 2023 could have kept him off the stage for a long time. It did not. His presence at Cannes, his cutting language, and this piece as a collective reactivation of an old malaise show an unchanged determination: to make cinema a broken mirror of our social tensions.
Faced with controversies, he persists in believing in the power of speech and the responsibility of the artist. Not to preach, but to shake. To make appear, behind the tumult, the fractures we too often get used to ignoring.