La Mort se Mérite (Death Must Be Earned) paints a portrait of Serge Livrozet, one of the protagonists of the French counterculture movement of the 1970s, a former plumber, former safe-cracker, co-founder—along with Michel Foucault—of the Prisoners' Action Committee, a self-taught writer, and an anarchist activist. In front of the camera, this "anarchist who doesn't like bombs" gives himself over to the intimist cinematic approach of Nicolas Drolc, showing little compassion for himself, or for life itself and the pleasures he seeks from it "in order to make this pathetic sojourn in the world as unobjectionable as possible."