Barely a week after Mathieu Kassovitz had announced on social media that he was working on a musical adaptation of his 1995 film La Haine, 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk was shot and killed by a police officer in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. The event, which sparked demonstrations and riots across France last summer, was a shocking reminder of the killing that inspired La Haine in the first place.
Thirty years earlier, in 1993, 17-year-old Zairian immigrant Makomé M'Bowolé had been shot dead by a police officer while in custody. Kassovitz started writing the film in the immediate aftermath of M'Bowolé's death. La Haine follows three friends, Hubert, Vinz and Saïd, as they roam the streets of Paris and the suburb of Chanteloup-les-Vignes in the 24 hours that follow a police beating that has left a young man in hospital. The trio embody the phrase black-blanc-beur (black-white-Arab), which celebrates France's multiculturalism, echoing the bleu-blanc-rouge of the French flag.
