08-07-2025
Jean-Pierre Thorn Dies: French ‘Dare To Struggle, Dare To Win' Director & ACID Org Co-Founder Was 78
French director Jean-Pierre Thorn, who was known for his socially engaged cinema and was also a co-founder of indie cinema org l'ACID, has died at the age of 78.
French media reported that Thorn, who was born in January 24, 1947, in Paris, died unexpectedly on July 5. The director and activist was celebrated for his work 'giving pride back to workers and immigrants' as he captured them standing up for their rights.
More from Deadline
2025 Deaths Photo Gallery: Hollywood & Media Obituaries
2024 Hollywood & Media Deaths: Photo Gallery & Obituaries
Ted Cordes Dies: Longtime Head Of NBC's Broadcast Standards Was 87
Thorn first made his name as a director with the 1968 documentary Dare To Struggle, Dare To Win (Oser lutter, oser vaincre).
Capturing a historic strike at the Renault-Flins automobile factory during France's 1968 social protests which saw workers and students unite, it remains one of his best known works at home and internationally to this day.
Reminiscing about the making of the film in an interview with the Les Mutins de Pangée audiovisual cooperative in 2023, Thorn said he had felt compelled to capture the workers' side of the protests.
'I said myself we need to have images of the workers' movement. I felt that the barricades in the Latin Quarter weren't enough… it was so extraordinary… ten million strikers, that's huge,' he recounted. 'I became obsessed with the idea of getting inside a factory.'
'There was no video. We shot on 16mm. The challenge was finding cameras and film,' he recalled, noting that the film world was also on strike during this period.
'A group of young cineastes got together to do 'an active strike'… we were around a 100… loosely connected by the fact that we were close to Chris Marker and his work on Far From Vietnam. We pooled our cameras and film and that's how I got started.'
Thorn would go on to take a job as a metal worker at the Alsthom transport vehicle factory in the outer Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen, staying there for eight years.
During this time, he made the 1973 medium-length film La Grève des ouvriers de Margoline, which translates as 'the Margoline workers' strike', about industrial action by undocumented workers against poor conditions, sparked by a rise in right-wing rhetoric against migrants, as well as Le Dos au mur, capturing industrial action at the Alsthom plant.
Thorn branched into fiction in 1990 with Je t'ai dans la peau, starring Solveig Dommartin as a nun who falls in love with a priest and then becomes a union and feminist activist. It premiered in Cannes' now defunct Perspectives cinéma français sidebar.
Later credits included the documentary On n'est pas des marques de vélo, which translates as 'we're not makes of bicycle', capturing the birth of the French Hip-hop movement through the case of a young French and Tunisian man threatened with expulsion.
Thorn is also celebrated for his support of independent cinema as one of the co-founders of the France's Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (l'ACID).
In a press release paying tribute to Thorn, l'ACID recalled how he had been one of 80 signatories of a 1991 text in support of independent cinema and entitled 'Resister', alongside Claudine Bories, Robert Guédiguian and Gérard Mordillat, which acted as the spur for the body's creation.
The group secured support from France's National Cinema Centre (CNC) for the creation of l'ACID, which Thorn would preside over from 1992 to 1995.
During this time, he also negotiated with the CNC for the creation of the parallel l'ACID section at Cannes, which to this day remains a champion of independent cinema during the festival.'For our association, he represents an anchor in the memory of past and future struggles. Through his films, we're able to not lose sight of why we make films that maintain diversity and preserve our freedom and our autonomy,' wrote l'ACID in it release.
Best of Deadline
2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
2025 Deaths Photo Gallery: Hollywood & Media Obituaries
2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery
