The Crimson Rivers

Mathieu Kassovitz's The Crimson Rivers (French: Les Rivières pourpres) opened in France in September 2000 and grossed over $14 million at the domestic box office, becoming one of the highest-grossing French thrillers of its decade. Kassovitz had broken through internationally five years earlier with La Haine (1995), which won him the Best Director prize at Cannes; The Crimson Rivers was his first feature in the genre-thriller register and a deliberate move away from social-realist territory.

The screenplay is adapted from Jean-Christophe Grangé's 1998 novel of the same name. Grangé, a former war journalist turned crime novelist, had become one of the most successful French genre writers of the 1990s; the book sold over a million copies in France alone. The cast pairs Jean Reno — at peak French commercial visibility after Léon (1994) and Mission: Impossible (1996) — with Vincent Cassel, fresh from his collaborations with Kassovitz on La Haine and Gaspar Noé's Seul contre tous. Nadia Farès, Karim Belkhadra and Dominique Sanda fill the central supporting roles.

Cinematography is by Thierry Arbogast, the longtime Luc Besson collaborator (The Fifth Element, The Professional); the score is by Bruno Coulais. The film was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for the U.S. market and earned César nominations for Best Sound and Best Cinematography. Kassovitz produced and directed a 2004 sequel Crimson Rivers 2: Angels of the Apocalypse (without Cassel), and the property was extended into an eight-season Canal+/Studiocanal television series running from 2018 onwards.