30th anniversary!
A Community Collaborations event co-presented in partnership with Immigrant Welcome Network (IWN) with pre-screening presentation
Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with La Haine, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)—a Jew, an African, and an Arab—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La Haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis.
The Immigrant Welcome Network of Johnson County (IWNJC) was founded in February 2023, born from a shared vision of empowerment and solidarity among immigrants, refugees, and passionate Iowans. Led by a diverse group of founders and board members, many of whom are immigrants and refugees. Our organization is deeply rooted in the belief that the best ideas for solutions arise from those who are directly affected by challenges that people have faced.