Italian prison docu-drama tops in Berlin

BERLIN: The 62nd Berlin film festival wraps up after awarding its Golden Bear top prize to Italy’s veteran directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani for their gripping prison docu-drama Caesar Must Die.

The picture shows real-life murderers and mafiosi from a highsecurity jail in Rome staging Shakespeare’s tragedy Julius Caesar, with their own personal dramas giving resonance to the play’s themes of betrayal and vengeance.

“We hope that when the film is released to the general public that cinemagoers will say to themselves or even those around them ... that even a prisoner with a dreadful sentence, even a life sentence, is and remains a human being,” Paolo Taviani, 80, said.

“Thanks to the sublime and simple words of Shakespeare, these prisoners for a few days came back to life. It was only a handful of days but they experienced passion and energy and I would like to dedicate this to them.”

His brother Vittorio, 82, read out the names of the inmates who took part in the film as he accepted the prize from the jury president, British director Mike Leigh, at a gala ceremony on Saturday.

The Jury Grand Prix runner-up prize went to Just the Wind by Bence Fliegauf, which was inspired by a spree of killings of Roma in Hungary in 2008 and 2009 in which six people died including a fiveyear-old boy.

Rachel Mwanza, a 14-year-old from the Democratic Republic of Congo, appearing in her first movie, the moving Canadian child soldier drama War Witch, accepted the Silver Bear award for best actress.

Caesar Must Die emerged as an early crowd pleaser among the 18 contenders.

It was the first Golden Bear for Italy since 1991 when The House of Smiles by Marco Ferreri claimed the prize.