A bunch of convicts in a maximum security prison, suddenly face a new challenge: to prepare and stage a William Shakespeare play in-house.Much as for many of them it initially became an excuse to spend more time outside their cells, in the process each of them had to come face to face with their own selves, the issues with one another as well as their fate.On this note, this is an area that this film excels in the sense that this group of people are happy to train to act as anyone else but themselves.To their credit they gave their all but it was not easy as consciousness begun to kick in and the struggles appeared. During this time, they forgot they were convicts, some lifers, but became actors who lived in the time of Caesar.The most profound moments appeared after the end of the play when the inmates stopped pretending they were actors and had to face the reality that heir cell was once more a prison and staring at the ceiling for infinity resumed.For a 76 minute film, it has substantial depth and takes the audience into a journey of forgetfulness, reality and transformation.

This movie was extremely disappointing! Perhaps because I had high expectations after reading about the number awards it had won. I thought there was an obvious opportunity lost to create a richer narrative by delving deeper into the backgrounds of each of the inmates and then relating it back to the play. At the start they introduce each player along with their crimes committed. I was curious to find out what had convinced them to decide to audition for the play in the first place and what participating in play meant to them personally. Though there were hints of this for example when the inmate who plays Brutus has a momentary pause about how a line in the play conjures a memory of an exchange with a friend from his past, this moment is brushed immediately aside and the actors continue to rehearse.Though film depicts the passion of the inmates to excel as players well, the lack of dimension in the overall story made the film very unsatisfying.

After attending the premiere of "Cesare Deve Morire", I was not so sure about the movie. It was a good movie, but somehow essayist, rather loose, not catchy. The outstanding performance of Salvatore Striano (Brutus) was striking and rewarded by the audience. The beautiful composition of black and white pictures was of high aesthetic value. It is a very calm movie, the music is nearly minimalistic. So how come it had a huge impact on me - later? In contrast to most other movies I had seen in Berlin, it was important. Other movies dealt with existentialistic, superficially more important topics than with some prisoners rehearsing a Shakespeare play. Yet "Cesare Deve Morire" had more to say and thus it deserved the Golden Bear. The questions it poses are the same ones as in the Shakespeare play in interrelation with the real destiny of the imprisoned play actors. Even though it is not a particularly spectacular movie, it has the tenor of what makes a strong movie: Importance. The filmmaking is of minor importance, the idea is in the foreground, which is the right decision. The play continues in our minds after the final curtain. Impressive.

I saw the world premiere of this movie at the Berlinale, where it won the golden bear last night. The movie is not bad, but also not special. The basic idea -real prison inmates play Shakespeares "Julius Caerar"- makes the movie interesting and the impressive acting makes you often forget, what fate those men face and what brought them to prison (murder, mafia-crimes etc). But since you know all that from the promotion already, the movie sometimes just leads up to watching an old Shakespeare-play, which we also already know. Just some philosophic aspects (at the end) and the idea of not showing the actual play, but the criminals only practicing it most of the time, is very entertaining.