Kassovitz has also elaborated on the specific events that led to the creation of La Haine, the first of which was the story of Zairian Makome M’Bowole, a victim that was handcuffed to a radiator and shot at point blank range in police custody in 1993. Then there was Abdel, the film character attacked in the riots, whose story was lifted from the death of Malik Oussekine, a student protester chased and beaten to death by riot police in 1986.

Again, like Gahan, Irvoas and Le Chenadec in 2005, Oussekine had not been violent or actively rioted. La Haine succeeds in its mission of articulating the anger felt by minority communities at their mistreatment. It also succeeds in highlighting the consequences of this hostility – more death, more violence, more discrimination. Of the three main characters, it is Hubert that speaks the most sense, famously speaking the line from which the film’s title is derived – “ La haine attire la haine”, or “Hatred breeds hatred”. His words echo throughout the film as we see the characters beaten by policemen and forced to sleep on the streets they resonate again as neo-Nazis beat the boys in a racist attack (followed by a scene which sees Vinz incapable of cold-blooded murder) and they become extremely pertinent when Vinz is accidentally shot dead by a police officer. There’s a tagline which recurs throughout the film that loosely translates as “so far, so good” – it’s a reference to the importance of one act of violence which subsequently becomes a catalyst.

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