Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die), 2012

San Diego Italian Film Festival presents: Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die), 2012

What happens when a member of the Mafia is cast as Cesare in an Italian prison version of Julius Caesar? Who will live and who will die?

Every year in the high-security wing at Rome’s Rebibbia prison, professional actors and directors create moving theater with murderers, Mafia capos and other hardened criminals as their actors. This year, well-known theater director Fabio Cavalli is putting on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a story of over-reaching ambition, betrayal, and brotherhood – not unlike the environment many of his “actors” come from. Cavalli puts the prisoners, many serving life terms, through their paces, and they grow into their parts, transformed by the experience and the surprising relevance of ancient Rome to their lives today in a Roman prison.