Caché (French: [kaʃe]), also known as Hidden, is a 2005 neo-noir psychological thriller film written and directed by Michael Haneke and starring Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche.

The plot follows an upper-middle-class French couple, Georges (Auteuil) and Anne (Binoche), who are terrorised by anonymous tapes that appear on their front porch and seem to show the family is under surveillance.

An affluent Parisian couple, Anne and Georges Laurent, discover a videotape left on their property without explanation that shows hours of footage of their residence, implying they are under surveillance.

Puzzled about its origin, they debate its purpose, considering whether it might be a practical joke played by friends of their 12-year-old son, Pierrot, or the work of fans of Georges, who hosts a literary television show.

When the Laurents receive another tape, revealing a low-income housing apartment, Georges tells Anne he has a suspect in mind, but will not say who until he can confirm his suspicion.

[7] During the Algerian War, the National Liberation Front responded to the French right's attacks on France's Arabs,[8] and as many as 200 protesters in Paris may have been shot or drowned in the Seine River.

[9] In planning the film, he chose the thriller genre as a model but intended the true point to be an exploration of guilt; he deliberately left the question of who sent the tapes ambiguous: I'm not going to give anyone this answer.

[16] While the Paris massacre inspired the plot, Haneke said the story was not about a "French problem" as something unusual, remarking, "This film was made in France, but I could have shot it with very few adjustments within an Austrian – or I'm sure an American – context".

[24] Auteuil had learned of the 1961 massacre only after reading about it in L'Obs circa 1995; he accepted the role, interested in exploring the national conscience surrounding the incident, which made an impression on him.

[45] Scholar Susannah Radstone argues that while critics focused on the film as a statement on the Algerian War in particular, the story is generally about "the trauma of violence perpetuated upon the colonized and the guilt that now ought rightfully to be acknowledged by the colonial power".

[48] Georges's dream, in which he sees young Majid kill the rooster, and then menace him with the ax, "presents a spectacle of real death in the place of any simulation or reconstruction of the events of October 1961", author Michael Lawrence writes.

Author Patrick Crowley writes these are used to represent "the return of the colonial repressed ... within contemporary forms of imperialism", and that they are connected to the Paris massacre and the Holocaust.

[52] Celik added that historical revisionism in denying colonial crimes made Caché well-timed for 2005, with the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the National Front.

Academic Jehanne-Marie Gavarini notes photography was employed to preserve memory in the 19th and 20th centuries, suggesting the videos in the story serve to assist remembering, as opposed to being evidence of surveillance as a terror tactic.

[63] Editors Amresh Sinha and Terence McSweeney also identified Caché as part of a 21st-century trend of films concerned with memory, along with Memento, Mulholland Drive, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Pan's Labyrinth.

[66] Scholar Hugh S. Manon hypothesises the surveillance represents psychiatrist Jacques Lacan's "le regard – 'the gaze'", as psychoanalysis, which Georges wishes to avoid.

[67] Manon suggests that unlike Hidden, the French title Caché has a double meaning, referencing "masks" silent film cinematographers used to block parts of shots to highlight another element.

[90] Noting that the opening sequence is characterised by a lengthy take in which the camera is stationary and focused on a street, with a "crowded composition" and a two-storey house in the centre, essayist Jonathan Thomas compares this to a photograph, along with sounds of birds, and described it as "idyllic".

[95] Gavarini asserts that the opening is deceptive as to whether the viewer is seeing from the protagonists' perspective, producing "confusion between the director's camera and the diegetic video" and involving the audience as perpetrators of the surveillance.

In his 2006 analysis, he writes, "Haneke's direction is irreverent and Lynchian, drawing parallels to the works of John-Luke Godard and Claire Denis in its critique of societal facades and exploration of existential themes.

"[112] In a follow-up review from 2009, he added, "Visually, Cash embraces an art nouveau aesthetic, with kinographic touches reminiscent of film noir classics and the chic flair of François Truffaut.

"[113] In Le Monde, Jean-François Rauger wrote that while Haneke may be heavy-handed in his negative outlook and use of news about war in the Middle East playing the background, the atmosphere of terror deserved credit.

[115] Variety critic Deborah Young reviewed Haneke's pacing favorably and found themes of responsibility, regarding France and Algeria but tied into the United States and Europe in the Iraq War.

[117] Film Comment contributor Michael Joshua Rowin considered it Haneke's most political work to date, "not merely liberal hand wringing" in its depiction of "passive-aggressive oppression and its manifestation as a slow-building, unresolved societal tension".

[99] Roger Ebert awarded it four stars, lauding its focus on "paranoia and distrust" rather than providing a whodunit conclusion, and remarking on the way characters hide so much from each other, reflecting the title.

[121] Caché's detractors include Andrew Sarris of The New York Observer, who wrote "Too much of the plot's machinery turns out to be a metaphorical mechanism by which to pin the tail of colonial guilt on Georges and the rest of us smug bourgeois donkeys".

[122] In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle called it "a handsome fraud...in its style, technique and ultimate message", becoming dull and "a drab social polemic".

[124] Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader called Caché a "brilliant if unpleasant puzzle without a solution", writing that "Haneke is so punitive toward the couple and his audience that I periodically rebelled against—or went into denial about—the director's rage, and I guess that's part of the plan.

[126] Ebert added the film to his Great Movies list in 2010, expressing disbelief about missing a possible "smoking gun" after two viewings, crediting Juliette Binoche for a naturalistic performance, and pondered the 1961 massacre: "Has France hidden it in its memory?

[141] Austria's Fachverband der Audiovisions und Filmindustrie protested the criteria, and Haneke, whose previous French-language The Piano Teacher was not disqualified as the Austrian submission, also called the rules "really stupid".