Hass / Μίσος / Ură

based on the film "La Haine" by Mathieu Kassovitz

The back seat of a Citroën. Forehead pressed against the cold window, gaze drifting across the glowing sign on the facade of a concrete tower block: "I see something you don't see."

La Haine (1995) by Mathieu Kassovitz captures 24 hours in the lives of three young men - trapped between the suburbs, police brutality, and the constant threat of social erasure. The film explores friendship and rage, powerlessness and hopelessness, and the question of how violence emerges and is passed on. The famous line "so far so good" echoes to this day: as a mantra of denial in a society in free fall.

This international collaboration with the Greek theatre company Spectrum Amke takes La Haine as a starting point to examine contemporary forms of life at society's margins. Newly written texts from the master's programme "Professional Writing" at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena transpose the film's motifs, characters, and conflicts into the present-day reality of Jena's periphery - scenes of young people caught between origin and homelessness, between concrete blocks and global image streams, between social discontent and the rise of authoritarian and fascist thinking. The hip-hop soundtrack created specifically for this production by artist Sorbas echoes the musical DNA of "La Haine," in which rap as the voice of the street and expression of resistance plays a central role.

This is not a retelling of the film, but an update: What does hatred mean today? Who is allowed to speak, who is heard, who disappears from view? How do violence, resistance, and solidarity change in an age of social media, intensified exclusion, and political radicalization?

ZwischenStücke is a collaboration between Mülheimer Theatertage, the City Library, and Theater an der Ruhr.

Performed in German and Romanian.