29/02/2012 - Caesar will be out in Italy next Friday with Sacher. "I saw it in November and I immediately snapped it", said the director-distributor

"Caesar Must Die [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
film profile] will be released next Friday with Sacher, initially in 40 copies", says Nanni Moretti, proud distributor of the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear. "I saw it in November, after many had refused to bring the film to cinema, and I snapped it up immediately", he told the press during the presentation of the film this morning in Rome, attended by the two directors and part of the cast. And he explained: "It’s a victory for Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, not for Italian cinema".

The directors, however, talked about how they were met with a collective excitement for this prestigious recognition when they returned to Italy: "The Minister for Culture called us after we had won and told us: we’re trying to give Italy a new image and your film helps us", confides Paolo Taviani.

"The film was born from a play we saw in the Rebibbia prison, staged by Fabio Cavalli ", Vittorio told the press. "We were blown away and moved by it. And we decided to shoot Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a story of blood and betrayal, together with the prisoners. We immediately established a close relationship of complicity.

Bruto is played by Salvatore Striano, who, after his time in a youth detention centre and in Rebibbia, was released in 2006 and started working as an actor. "In prison you have a lot of time, you can study, you can learn a trade,you can become an actor". And he makes an appeal: "the Reggio Calabria prison doesn’t even have a library, write about it".

(Translated from Italian)