How far can it be argued that your films provide a realistic representation of people and the places they come from?

It can be argued that the representation of people and places in the film La Haine has very clear accuracies even if it is not entirely realistic.
For example it is not realistic because we never get a point of view from a police officer, we only get a point of view from the three main characters that have a deep hatred for the police. So throughout the film we only see two police officers that do not act in a disgusting and appalling manner to the main characters and it is hard to believe that in the entire of France the police system consists almost entirely of racist and aggressive individuals with almost no clean-cut, legitimate officers.

However, many of the events and dramatizations in the film are based on real life events and facts that accurately portray the life and hardships people like these characters would be facing in France at the time.

The production was filmed on location in the projects of France during the riot time, so all the buildings and settings are accurate portrayals of the projects. As well as this, many of the extra cast members are residents that lived around the area it was filmed, so they are also accurate. The most relevant one of these extras is the person who played the role of Abdel, the boy who is injured at the start of the film. The actor playing him was from the projects and had a real life experience with police brutality, where he was badly injured. This shows that the stories surrounding police brutality towards ethnic minorities in the film, though fictionalised, are based upon real facts and events.
As well as the extras being people from the projects, the groups represented in the film are not fictionalised. There really were cases of police brutality and there really were Skinheads that attacked ethnic minorities in a violent manner like the one shown  in the Skinhead scene of the film.

The opening scene of La Haine shows riots in France. This footage is genuine footage of the riots and is not staged. This immediately gives the film a sense of realism and gives the audience an insight to what it was really like in this situation for the characters. Though these characters are fictional persons on film, they share their names with the actors playing them. This has the same effect as the riot footage, giving the audience a sense of realism. It makes the relationship between the three boys on screen seem genuine and this allows the audience to empathise. It also pulls their stories into reality and allows the audience to relate them to real life situations.

Another scene that is based in the reality of French society at the time, is the police interrogation scene with Hubert and Said. In this scene they are brought into the police station for a minor offence of disturbance and are both verbally, physically and racially abused by two police officers, while another looks on and does nothing.  This scene is almost a direct reference to an incident in France where Mokome M’bowle young black male was brought in to a police station for a minor offence and while there was abused because of his race and ultimately killed when a police officer put a gun to his neck and the gun went off.
In the scene, the police officer makes a reference to this when he threatens to put a gun the Hubert’s neck. To audiences that are not French this is a horrible scene, of course but French audiences who may have seen the report on the M’Bowle incident would view it as a direct reference and it would be disturbing and very real for them.

The representation of the media in the film is also an honest one. The media often demonised people from the projects and so the people in Paris would also have this view of them if their only sources of knowledge on those places came from media representation. There is a scene in a playground where a woman from the media stereotypes the three boys, when she asks them if they were involved in the riots she immediately assumes they were because of where they live and their race. This aggravates the boys and we are shown a point of view shot from the camera man’s camera, it is of Vinz being aggressive towards the camera. This scene was used to show how the media only shows negative footage of those in the projects and this is realistic because the media does show negative stereotypes of these people.
These stereotypes and the medias affect are reinforced in the art gallery when the upper class people from Paris look down on the three boys.

Though it can be argued that there are some inaccuracies in this film, there are many points that show the reality for people in France at the time of filming. So La Haine can be seen as a realistic representation of at least some of the places and people involved in the events that are shown