UN PROCÈS

Dr Stockmann, the physician overseeing the public baths that have brought fame—and prosperity—to a small spa town, discovers that the waters so prized by tourists have been contaminated by local industry. Faced with the refusal of the town’s leading figures—including his own brother, the mayor—to make this information public, he organises a meeting with the townspeople. Yet when it becomes clear that such a revelation would lead the community to economic ruin, they denounce him as “an enemy of the people”.

Such is the premise of Henrik Ibsen’s play of the same name, written in 1882 and striking in the way it seems to anticipate the issues shaping our contemporary world. The clash between ecological conscience and the intertwined interests of politics and economics; the corruption of ruling elites; the ostracisation of whistleblowers; the manipulation of public opinion by a press beholden to industrial power; the fragility of democracy itself… The small society depicted by Ibsen bears an uncanny resemblance to our own.

It is around these questions, and more specifically around the desire to create the conditions for a genuine public space of discussion and reflection, that the collaboration between Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy and actor Wagner Moura, winner of the Best Actor Award at the 2025 Festival de Cannes and the 2026 Golden Globe Awards, was born. Together, they imagine a production that presents itself neither as a staging nor as an adaptation of Ibsen’s play, but rather as a device through which it may be re-examined. In this new narrative, set several years after his downfall, Dr Stockmann demands a trial in order to confront his version of events with that of his brother and others. Transforming the entire theatre into a courtroom, Un procès places the audience at the heart of this confrontation, positioning them simultaneously as judges and witnesses, immersed in a debate that touches upon the very condition of our contemporary democracies.