Tom Duval, 20, is an activist for the French Communist Party in Le Havre. Raised in a working-class environment, of a sailor father and a mother working in the factory, Tom has been immersed since his earliest childhood in the world of unions, strikes and social protests. In 2017, the second round of the presidential election shows Macron-Le Pen.
For Tom, the advance of the extreme right is a scourge that must be fought, considering Marine Le Pen and her party as “fascist”. One evening, on his way home, he comes across a poster of the PCF covering that of the National Front, torn. From there, it clicks. Tom finally finds a concrete way to challenge the extreme right and participates assiduously in the actions and life of the party. In May 2021, Tom’s joy is at its height when the PCF formalizes the presence of an independent communist candidate in the presidential election: Fabien Roussel.
From then on, the young activist will never stop supporting his candidate on the ground, in the collage of posters and in the distribution of leaflets. Mastering the program of his candidate, which is based in particular on the themes of youth, purchasing power and the fight against tax evasion, Tom is ready to convince the most skeptical and especially the target that all parties are fighting over: the abstainers.
But above all, faced with the veterans who remember the excesses of communism in the USSR, Tom likes to recall that the French Communist Party “has always been a vehicle for major social struggles and progressivism, like the right to vote for women or paid vacation “. In parallel with his commitment, Tom dreams of following in the footsteps of his elders, sailors from father to son, but must confront the rise in unemployment in this area, the degradation of social rights and above all the greed of big business. . So many subjects that he wishes to claim through his political commitment.
For the 2022 presidential election, Tom is one of Fabien Roussel’s most fervent supporters and in particular his measure of a student income of €1,000, “allowing young people to be able to study with dignity without having to juggle often precarious jobs and difficult”. A particularly important measure for him who was sometimes a pizza delivery man or a car handler and suffered the indifference of employers as to working conditions.
Directed by Samuel Elfassy (StudioFact), Ruhohan Chen (ESJ Lille)