based on the movie »La Haine« by Mathieu Kassovitz

Back seat of a Citroën. Forehead resting against the cold side window, the gaze skims the illuminated lettering on the façade of a concrete housing block: “I spy with my little eye something you don’t see.”

La Haine (1995) by Mathieu Kassovitz is a film of stasis and explosion at once: 24 hours in the life of three young men, trapped between the banlieue, police violence, and the constant threat of social annihilation. The film tells of friendship and rage, of powerlessness, lack of prospects, and the question of how violence emerges—and is passed on. The famous quote “so far, so good” still reverberates today: a mantra of denial in a society in free fall.

The international collaboration with the Greek theatre company Spectrum Amke takes La Haine as a point of departure to examine contemporary forms of life on the margins of society. Newly written texts from the Master’s program Professional Writing at Friedrich Schiller University Jena transpose the film’s motifs, characters, and conflicts into the present-day reality of Jena’s periphery. Scenes emerge of young people caught between origin and rootlessness, between prefabricated housing estates and global streams of images, between social discontent and the rise of authoritarian and fascist ways of thinking. The hip-hop soundtrack developed specifically for the production by the artist Sorbas connects to the musical DNA of La Haine, in which rap plays a central role as the voice of the street and as an expression of resistance and self-assertion.

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

Following the first theatre exchange with Örkény Színház in Budapest, the theatre continues its international collaboration with Spectrum AMKE this season. In parallel with the Jena production, the staging 24 hours in a world that doesn’t belong to us is being created at Theatro Technis in Athens (premiere: February 16, 2026; director: Pantelis Flatsousis). Both productions are developed with artists from Greece and Germany and will be shown in the respective partner city.

Theater exchange Jena–Athens in cooperation with Spectrum AMKE and Theatro Technis Cooperation with the Master’s program Professional Writing at FSU Jena