In the offices of a major national newspaper on the verge of bankruptcy, an editorial meeting erupts into conflict. The newly appointed editor-in-chief, freshly recruited from a conservative newspaper, refuses to allow the publication of an investigation into a controversial theatre production. Within this tense closed-door setting, ideological fractures explode into the open, intensified by rumours of the paper’s imminent acquisition by an industrial conglomerate.

After imagining a trial questioning the limits of freedom of expression in literature (Toute intention de nuire, 2024) and a municipal council confronted with the installation of a controversial artwork in public space (La Politique du pire, 2025), Adrien Barazzone concludes with À l’article de la mort his “Trilogy of Systems”—a cycle examining major democratic institutions through the prism of artistic freedom.

At a time when journalism across Europe is threatened by the concentration of media ownership in private groups, the spread of misinformation and its instrumentalisation for political or economic purposes, the Geneva-based director turns his attention to the world of the press. Through his distinctive blend of dialectics, complexity and humour, he creates a fiction capable of exposing the fractures and tensions threatening contemporary democracies.