Caesar Must Die

In the high security wing of a prison in Rome a theatre project is under way. The inmates are to stage Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The film begins with the auditions, continues through rehearsal and ends with the performance. The rehearsals take place in the cells, the yard and the corridors; the place becomes the set. The play is about betrayal, power and murder, and most of those performing are inside for similar crimes. Paolo and Vittorio Taviani direct. It won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival in 2012. The form sits between fiction and documentary. The rehearsal scenes are real and staged; the performers are real prisoners and their parts were chosen to fit them. The image is largely black and white; only the performance at the beginning and end is in colour, and that choice frames the narrative. The text is not standard Italian; the men play in their own dialects and Shakespeare's language is carried into the speech of Naples, Sicily and Puglia. The most quoted line belongs to one of the prisoners: since he came to know art, he says, he has understood that his cell is a prison. The narrative does not take up the men's crimes and does not absolve them; the film looks only at the rehearsal. Who it is for: viewers who like films rooted in theatre and work between documentary and fiction. Who it is not for: it is short but dense, some scenes are closed without knowing the play, and the narrative carries no plot.