Films & Schedules - CAESAR MUST DIE

Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and this year’s Italian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Caesar Must Die deftly melds narrative and documentary in a powerful drama-within-a-drama. In Rome’s Rebibbia prison, the prisoners prepare to stage Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and in exploring the text find a tale of fraternity, power, and betrayal that parallels their own lives and stories. Seamlessly moving in and out of the text as they wrestle with notions of necessity and the boundaries of order, drama comes alive on multiple, and timeless, levels. “This latest masterpiece from Italy’s famed Taviani brothers not only serves as a deeply human document but a caustic portrait of our own imprisoned societies, reminding us that a life without art truly is a prison.”—AFI Fest (76 mins.)

Selected Filmography: Allonsanfan (74), Padre Padrone (77), The Night of Shooting Stars (82), Fiorile (93)

Sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute, San Francisco and the Italian Film Commission, Los Angeles.

FILM REVIEW

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Documentary.