Le cri

July 1987 saw the final shutting down of the steel melting factory where Robert Panaud worked his entire life.

Shortly after the ceremony, Panaud sat down with his son Pierre and began recounting his memoirs. The memoirs of a simple steelworker, an ordinary man, proud of his job and his working class family of which he is the last representative.

His story is also that of the lives of several generations of steelworkers and their families, Fred, Jules, Graziella and Pierette, their dignity, vitality and solidarity. Each generation with its share of joy, disappointment and drama. Each generation with its cry: first the shout needed to be heard above the deafening clamour of the machines, then the cry of rebellion, of the revolts from 1830 to today. And the cry of suffering from horrific steel-working accidents. And all too often, the cry of death.

Hervé Basle is a filmmaker, author of a number of hugely successful television films and several novels and essays among which Entre terre et mer (1997) and Le champ dolent (2002) both published by Lattès.