Caesar Must Die

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.

Filmography

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)

★★★★★

“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

'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

★★★★

★★★★

“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

Read the full review

'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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