Cinema Releases - Caesar Must Die
A highly enjoyable film by the legendary directors of Padre Padrone.
Winner, Ecumenical Prize, Berlin Film Festival
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani are brothers. Paolo was born in San Miniato (Pisa) on 8 November 1931, and Vittorio was born in in the same town on 30 September 1929.
They have always worked together on their films as writers and directors. They started directing in the early 60s and have made both fiction and documentary films. At the Cannes Film Festival, the Taviani Brothers won the Palme d’Or for Padre Padrone in 1977 and the Grand Prix du Jury for La Notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars) in 1982. They were awarded the Golden Lion for their entire career at the Venice Film Festival in 1986.
Caesar Must Die is their latest film, a blend of documentary and fiction that was awarded the Golden Bear at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival.
1962 Un uomo da bruciare
1963 I fuorilegge del matrimonio
1967 Sovversivi
1969 Sotto il segno dello Scorpione
1973 San Michele aveva un gallo
1974 Allonsanfan
1977 Padre Padrone
1979 Il Prato
1982 La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars)
1984 Kaos
1987 Good Morning Babilonia
1990 Il sole anche di notte (Night Sun)
1993 Fiorile
1996 Le affinità elettive (Elective Affinities)
1998 Tu ridi (You Laugh)
2001 Resurrezione
2004 Luisa Sanfelice
2006 La masseria delle allodole (The Lark Farm)
2012 Cesare deve Morire (Caesar Must Die)
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CAST |
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Cassio/Cassius |
Cosimo Rega |
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Bruto/Brutus |
Salvatore Striano |
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Cesare/Caesar |
Giovanni Arcuri |
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Marcantonio/Mark Antony |
Antonio Frasca |
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Decio/Decius |
Juan Dario Bonetti |
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Lucio/Lucius |
Vincenzo Gallo |
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Metello/Metellus |
Rosario Majorana |
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Trebonio/Trebonius |
Francesco De Masi |
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Cinna |
Gennaro Solito |
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Casca |
Vittorio Parrella |
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Legionary |
Pasquale Crapetti |
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Fortune-teller |
Francesco Carusone |
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Stratone/Strato |
Fabio Rizzuto |
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Ottavio/Octavian |
Maurilio Giaffreda |
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CREW |
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Directed by |
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani |
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Written by |
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani |
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Screenplay collaboration |
Fabio Cavalli |
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Freely based on Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare |
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Camera |
Simone Zampagni |
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Editor |
Roberto Perpignani |
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Sound |
Benito Alchimede, Brando Mosca |
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Music |
Giuliano Taviani, Carmelo Travia |
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General Organiser |
Patrich Giannetti |
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Director of theatre |
Fabio Cavalli |
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Assistant Director |
Mimmola Girosi |
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Executive Producer |
Donatella Palermo |
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Delegate Producers |
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Agnese Fontana |
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Producer |
Grazia Volpi |
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A Kaos Cinematografica production, in association with Stemal Entertainment srl, Le Talee, La Ribalta – Centro Studi E. M. Salerno. |
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With the collaboration of Rai Cinema. |
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2012 / Colour and black and white / 76’ |
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★★★★★
“The tragedy unfolds with impeccable visual and verbal logic in what seems like a very short 72 minutes.”
Rita Di Santo, THE MORNING STAR
“A vivid presentation of brutal politics as a way of life. In short, it fascinates.”
Karen Krizanovich.THE ARTS DESK
★★★★
"A thought-provoking beautifully shot meta-drama...Caesar Must Die is an impressively multilayered work, rich in irony and formal intelligence."
Ashley Clark, GROLSCH FILM WORKS
★★★★
“Compelling”
Chris Buckle, THE SKINNY
★★★★
“Incredibly absorbing and effective…compelling”
Allan Hunter, THE DAILY EXPRESS
★★★★
“Last year’s deserving Berlin Festival winner, tells a story that effectively blurs the lines between art and reality…can’t fail to move.”
Derek Malcolm, THE EVENING STANDARD
“Never anything less than interesting…the most powerful thing about the film is the audition” scene…a brilliant sequence.”
Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN
“For us it was cinema or death” (Taviani brothers interview)
‘A taut, compassionate study of the preparations for a production of
Julius Caesar”
Ryan Gilbey, THE GUARDIAN INTERVIEW
★★★★
Critics' Choice/FILM OF THE WEEK
“Delightful, concise film…in a maximum security jail proves fertile ground for a slippery and surprisingly endearing drama.”
Dave Calhoun, TIME OUT
★★★★
“Documentary, but not as we know it…inside the high security wing of a Roman prison.”
Anthony Quinn, THE INDEPENDENT
★★★★
“Contains some highly dramatic moments that may, or may not have been rehearsed”
Kate Muir, THE TIMES
★★★★
TOTAL FILM
★★★★
“A humanist, quasi-documentary about a group of Italian maximum security prisoners performing Wiliam Shakespears illustrious tragedy.”
“A fascinating perceptive film that blurs the lines between art and reality.”
“The Taviani brothers “let slip the dogs of war”, thrusting the audience into their seats for the final scenes of the play, before observing the actors being rounded up and led back to their cells.”
Patrick Gamble,CINE-VUE
★★★★
FILM OF THE WEEK
"It's a curious, playful film"
Dave Calhoun, TIME OUT
"Similarly restless in spirit are Italy’s Taviani Brothers, who though now both well into their 80s, return with their grittiest film to date, the Golden-Bear winning Caesar Must Die, a raw slab of Shakespeare filmed in a Roman prison, with inmates making up the cast. Vittorio"
SIGHT & SOUND
"More intense than you might expect...it ranks among the most involving adaptations of Shakespeare ever put on screenit ranks among the most involving adaptations of Shakespeare ever put on screen."
Kenneth Turan, LA TIMES
★★★★
"Inventive, urgent, humane."
Tom Dawson, TOTAL FILM
'An innovative film, a drama-documentary about prisoners staging Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that’s so clever in the way it slips from play rehearsal into real squabbles, and absorbs the psychogeography of prison into its miss en scène, that its self-reflexivity feels seamless.'
'It’s all the more impressive how vividly the play comes across when performed by these harsh-faced, muscle-bound street thugs (fine actors indeed).'
Nick James, SIGHT and SOUND
★★★★
‘The film’s mere 76 minutes are more resonant than many far longer films, thanks to the way the Tavianis explore the complex relationship between life and art... a witty cautionary tale of failed idealism, revolutionary communal action, endless cyclical Utopianism and the value and concomitant cost of a commitment to art... humane, intelligent and affecting.’Geoff Andrew, TIME OUT
★★★★
“Stylish, engrossing and extremely well thought-out… a hugely rewarding, award-winning comeback for Paolo and Vittorio following a five-year, self-imposed hiatus.”
“A classical, yet still undeniably innovative fusion of contemporary prison life and good, old-fashioned smoke and mirrors.”
“Shakespeare's monumental exploration of betrayal and duplicity seems to have found a perfect new home in the form of Roman maximum security prison…a pacey, 76-minute feature of significant narrative complexity.”
Daniel Green, CINE-VUE
‘Now into their eighties, the Taviani brothers show with this remarkable, fresh and moving drama-documentary they have lost none of that mix of observational rigour and sympathy for the underdog that marked early films like Padre Padrone, their 1977 Palme d’Or winner.’
Lee Marshall, Screen
'Vital, provocative and entirely engaging,Caesar marks a wonderful late-career triumph for this still-formidable brother act.'
New York Film Festival
'You can only guess what the lines mean to the inmates, who register as atmospheric blanks at best and brutal exotics at worst, even if the tale that they enact with such earnest vigor works because the original tragedy does. The play’s the thing, to borrow another line, far more than the jailhouse setting is, which is this movie’s great, unsurprising revelation.'
Manhola Dargis, The New York Times
'...the most electrifying aspect of “Caesar Must Die” is the way that, at certain junctures, without our noticing, Shakespeare shades into normal dialogue. Not only is there no loss of pressure; if anything, you can sense the whole room tensing up.'
Anthony Lane, The New Yorker (Current CInema)
'striking...The Tavianis come not to use or mangle Shakespeare but to honor him. In multiple Italian dialects.'
Anthony Lane, The New Yorker (The Film File)
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(for a larger selection of images please see the Press section of our website)
Download poster
Video (45') of New York Film Festival Q&A with the Tavianis