And the one I did after it was very political too, Assassin(s).
It was a success all around the world because the kids have the same problems in New York, London and Paris or wherever. He told me once that La Haine was "a very political movie which showed a Paris that had not been seen on the screen before.” He continued: "I deal with three tough kids, a Jew, an Arab and an African. He accomplished his breakthrough as an actor in Jacques Audiard’s See How The Fall, opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant, for which he won a most-promising actor César award. He made his first short film Fierrot le Pou at the expense of Godard’s 1965 Pierrot Le Fou. Even today, he finds he has more in common with US cinema than le cinéma français.Īt 17, he left school to make his way into the business. Born on 3 August, 1967 Kassovitz spent a lot of time on his father’s film sets and at a young age he fell in love with the work of Steven Spielberg with whom he worked on Munich, in which he played a Belgian explosives expert, alongside Daniel Craig and Eric Bana. His mother Chantal Rémy is a film editor, and his father Peter is a director. Kassovitz fell into the business almost in the natural course of events. Recently the 53-year-old has found a new incarnation as the debonair spy archetype Guillaume Debailly, an intelligence officer who’s called back to Paris after six years undercover in Damascus, in the espionage TV series The Bureau (Le bureau des légends) now in its fifth season and an international hit. In Kassovitz, France, it seemed, had produced a young, talented and provocative filmmaker to rival American directors like Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino or even Britain's Danny Boyle.Īfter playing the romantic lead in Amèlie, which is about as far away from La Haine as you can get, and directing the big budget spectacular The Crimson Rivers, Kassovitz, at 25, became one of France’s most sought-after talents. Moreover, it was filmed in black and white, with no big name stars on a small budget. The interest was unusual as the film was written and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, a then largely unknown young filmmaker and actor. A success at the French box office, with about 500,000 viewers in the first six weeks of its release, as well as with the critics (it won the Best Director Award at Cannes), it became one of the most controversial and talked about French films in recent years.
When a film called La Haine was released in France in 1995 it caused something of a stir, to put it mildly. Mathieu Kassovitz: 'La Haine was a very political movie which showed a Paris that had not been seen on the screen before' Photo: Unifrance
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