The eighty-something Tavani brothers Paolo and Vittorio return with this inventive, urgent and humane prison drama, in which real-life Mafia and Camorra prisoners act in a version of Julius Caesar .
Shooting their blend of fiction and documentary in a maximum security prison outside Rome, and shifting between saturated colour (the present) and stark black-and-white (the past), the filmmakers explore how taking part in Shakespeare’s tale of friendship, honour and betrayal affects the cast.
“Ever since I discovered art,” laments one participant, “this cell has truly become a prison.”
