La Haine

Mathieu Kassovitz made La Haine at twenty-eight, in 1995, in the immediate aftermath of riots across the Paris banlieues following a police killing. The film won Best Director at Cannes that year and became a cultural reference point in France that has not faded, quoted by politicians, recreated in school curricula, name-checked in subsequent waves of cinema about French urban marginality.

Twenty-four hours in the life of Vinz, Saïd, and Hubert (Vincent Cassel, Saïd Taghmaoui, Hubert Koundé), three friends, Jewish, Arab and Black, in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris, on the day after a police riot has left their friend Abdel in a coma. Vinz has stolen a police officer's gun in the chaos and is wrestling with whether to use it if Abdel dies. The film moves through their day in stark high-contrast black-and-white (Pierre Aïm), with Kassovitz quoting Taxi Driver, Mean Streets and Do the Right Thing as he goes.

The recurring voice-over (jusqu'ici tout va bien, so far so good) about a man falling from a fifty-storey building has become one of the great cinematic political metaphors. Three decades on, the film's diagnosis of the relationship between the French police and the children of immigration remains painfully accurate.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: The defining film about the French banlieues, and the angriest debut of 1990s European cinema. A film whose opening images and closing line should be required viewing for anyone wanting to understand modern France.