(Catherine Hickley’s article appeared on Bloomberg Businessweek, 2/19.)
“Caesar Must Die,” a documentary about inmates in an Italian prison staging Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” last night won the Golden Bear award for the best movie at the Berlin Film Festival.
Directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, the film features prisoners from the Roman maximum security prison Rebibbia, many of them serving time for Mafia-related crimes. In accepting the prize, Vittorio Taviani named the prisoners who featured in the film and greeted them “in the solitude of their cells.”
“Among the inmates were a lot who had got life sentences, serious criminals,” Taviani said. “This play was a kind of liberation for them.”