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Caesar Must Die
Winner of the Golden Bear in the Official Competition at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival, Caesar Must Die is the new movie directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, a docu-film focusing on a theater experience inside a prison (Rom ...

Salvatore Striano

Italian actor Salvatore Striano has known the hardships of the detention home as a juvenile offender and after that many years behind bars in Rebibbia. Free, in 2006 he started an acting career with Fabio Cavalli, and after that with Emanuela Giordano and Umberto Orsini who gives him an important part in Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'. He makes his movie debut in Gomorra by Matteo Garrone, and after this he works with Abel Ferrara, Marco Risi, Stefano Incerti and in various television serials. In 2012 he lead the cast of Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Caesar Must Die, winner of the Golden Bear at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival.

Paolo e Vittorio Taviani

Italian directors and screenwriters Paolo and Vittorio Taviani were born in Italy in 1931 and 1929 respectively. Vittorio studied Law in Pisa and his brother, Art. Their interest in film began in 1954 when they made their first joint short film about their village entitled San Miniato, Luglio '44. They made a name for themselves internationally with the 1977 work Padre padrone (Golden Palm at Cannes Film Festival) and with La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars), Grand Prix du Jury at Cannes 1982. In 1974 their Allonsanfàn was selected at Cannes' Directors' Fortnight. They were awarded the Golden Lion for the Career at the Venice Film Festival in 1986. Their European coproduction La masseria delle allodole (The Lark Farm) was presented in a special screening at the 2007 Berlinale.

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A stage inside a prison: Caesar Must Die

Winner of the Golden Bear in the Official Competition at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival, Caesar Must Die is the new movie directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, a docu-film focusing on a theater experience inside a prison (Rome's Rebibbia), in the High Security Section. The cast is led by former inmate turned actor Salvatore Striano and all convicts of the Section. According to the directors, "after passing a number of gates and blockades, we reached a stage where twenty or so inmates, some of them serving life sentences, were reciting Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. They had chosen a few cantos of Hell and were now reliving the pain and torments of Paolo and Francesca, of Count Ugolino, of Ulysses - all in the hell of their own prison… They each spoke in their own dialects, occasionally addressing parallels between the poetic story evoked by the cantos and their own lives. We felt the need to discover through a film how the beauty of their performances was born from those prison cells, from those outcasts that live so far from culture. We suggested Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' to Fabio Cavalli, the stage director working with the inmates. We staged it with the collaboration of the inmates, filming in their cells, in the prison yard, the fathoms of the High Security Section and eventually on stage. We tried to contrast the darkness of their life as convicts with the poetic force of the emotions Shakespeare evokes - friendship and betrayal, murder and the torment of difficult choices, the price of power and truth. Reaching deep into a work like this means also looking at yourself, especially when one must leave the stage and return to the confinement of a cell."

Alessandro Zoppo

Plot:

The theater in Rome's Rebibbia Prison. A performance of Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' has just ended amidst much applause. The lights dim on the actors and they become prisoners once again as they are accompanied back to their cells. Six months earlier, the warden and a theater director speak to the inmates about a new project, the staging of Julius Caesar in the prison. The first step is casting. The second step is exploration of the text. The path is long and full of anxiety, hope and play. These are the feelings accompanying the inmates at night in their prison cells after each day of rehearsal.

Genres: Docu-film, Drama

Country: Italy (2012)

Release Date: 02-03-2012 (Italia)

Director: Paolo e Vittorio Taviani

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