“As all people know the ending, we have to find another way to tell it”: almost 30 years after its release, the cult film La Haine has been transposed by its director Mathieu Kassovitz into a musical show scheduled for fall 2024. The Vinz, Saïd and Hubert from 1995 performed by Vincent Cassel, Saïd Taghmaouï and Hubert Koundé will be played by actors-dancers-singers from October 10, 2024 at La Seine Musicale, in the Paris region.
These figures of stubborn suburbanites who end up encountering police violence will take on new features after a casting which saw “around 3,000 people” for these three main roles, as Mathieu Kassovitz explains to AFP. The director and his teams have been preparing this stage transposition for “two years”. The project was already well underway at the time of the death of Nahel, 17, killed at the end of June by a police officer during a road check in Nanterre.
“Nahel’s death is different (from what happens in the film, editor’s note), it was filmed. But I’ve been called every month for 30 years to comment on a blunder, it’s not something new,” says the man who is also an actor. “These images remind everyone that it never stopped, that’s why we have this poster.” It reads “Hate, so far nothing has changed”.
“Even if it’s called “La Haine”, it’s rather “good feeling”, like in the film, apart from the last ten seconds (tragic ending, editor’s note). There is emotion, laughter, rhythm, we take people by the collar, we take them on a journey” explains the 56-year-old filmmaker. “As everyone knows the ending, we have to find another way to tell it, but for that we have a distance of 30 years, it’s a broader vision than the one the film was able to give.”
Box office for the show opens Friday at 10 a.m. “The schedule is getting tighter and tighter but we’re not bad,” comments “Kasso”, who is recovering from a motorcycle accident in September. “I’m fine,” he slips. The 90-minute show – more or less like the feature film – must involve around thirty dancers, singers and actors. There will be around fifteen original songs created for the occasion by around ten artists. All in fourteen paintings.
“For people in the communications industry, you shouldn’t say that it’s a musical, because that sounds a bit corny, but it’s a musical in the sense that it tells a story in music and songs, inspired by of a film that was not.
The Seine Musicale was recently the site of the return to the forefront of the rock opera Starmania. But the comparisons stop there in hearing the master builder. “It’s more modern than a basic musical with singers who arrive, who declaim: hip-hop allows a more natural approach, it’s logical that there is an exchange in music, whereas in “ The umbrellas of Cherbourg”, there is no explanation when people sing in the middle of the scenes”.
The director promises “an interaction with screens, screens which are sets, sets which move, a mixture of technology and live action”. “It’s a never-before-seen mix between cinema and live performance, we don’t have a reference in the team when we talk about it among ourselves: we try to put the spectator in the camera’s place, so that it’s immersive “.
