Fiume o morte!

One hundred years on from Gabriele D’Annunzio’s bizarre occupation of Rijeka, then Fiume, the city’s residents don his uniforms, recreate his glitzy rallies, and complicate his legend with laughter, absurdity, and defiance. It is neither pure history nor satire, but a communal excavation of heritage filtered through the present’s ironic gaze. Igor Bežinović turns casting into an act of memory, asking strangers to become soldiers, former soldiers to become poets, and familiar streets to tremble with the echoes of propaganda. Here history is performed, contested, and reborn. We sense the durability of spectacle, but also the power of its theatrical undoing. No didactic truths are offered. Instead, the film thrives in its contradictions: is it compelling or ridiculous? Fascination or alarm? What remains clear is that history survives not only in archives, but in the messy, communal act of retelling and sometimes, in laughing at itself.

Or: Fiume o morte! is a film on poetry, dynamite, cocaine, machine guns, football, airplanes, furniture flying out of windows, concerts, prisons, sunbathing, thousands of soldiers, millions of bullets, endless speeches, a platypus and on the power of political performativity.

Director’s Statement:

It’s like a history lesson told in punk mode. I didn’t enjoy history until it was inhabited by people, by stories we could act out and reclaim.