Fiume o morte! 2025

In present-day Rijeka, director Igor Bezinović invites locals to reflect on Gabriele D’Annunzio, the Italian poet and nationalist who occupied the city, then known as Fiume, in the wake of World War I. The responses become more than memories; they form a threaded examination of how the occupation is remembered, mythologized, or questioned within the town’s ongoing story. The film gently probes what the episode still signifies for the city’s identity, inviting viewers to weigh how history is spoken, shown, and reconstructed in the present.

The occupation is brought to life through a rich, layered cinematic method: archival photographs and footage sit beside voice-over narration, documentary sequences, and staged reenactments performed largely by residents of Rijeka. The process itself is part of the narrative, offering a window into how histories are built. Auditions, rehearsals, preparations, and in-depth discussions about the historical material used to stage the reenactments reveal a communal effort to grapple with a complex past and to decide what to keep, what to reframe, and what to question.

The film’s cast of participants includes performances by several individuals who portray D’Annunzio, as well as others who embody soldiers and people tied to the era’s events. The performances are anchored by the voices and bodies of local contributors, whose involvement blurs the line between documentarian and subject, creating a living dialogue between then and now. The actors guiding these scenes include Ćenan Beljulji, Tihomir Buterin, Izet Medošević, Andrea Marsanich, Albano Vučetić, Massimo Ronzani, and Milovan Večerina Cico, each stepping into roles as D’Annunzio and as the soldiers and citizens who cross his path. Their performances are not merely reenactments; they are investigations into how a city’s memory is formed and re-formed.

As the narrative unfolds, the film anchors itself in the historical arc of D’Annunzio’s arrival in Fiume in September 1919 and his bold campaign to annex the city to Italy. The storytelling weaves between present-day sites and archival material to recreate the arc—speeches, military gatherings, ceremonies, and other events that defined the occupation. The immediacy of the present-day locations lends a tactile realism to the past, while the archival images provide a document of the era that the re-enactments seek to interpret and re-present. The film also places the establishment of the Italian Regency of Carnaro within this timeline and highlights the friction that developed between D’Annunzio and the Italian government, underscoring the political complexities behind a seemingly cinematic moment in history.

The construction of the narrative continually invites reflection on memory itself. By showing auditions, rehearsals, and the debates over which materials to use, the film makes visible the ethical and editorial choices behind historical storytelling. The result is a thoughtful, sometimes provocative portrait of how a single historical episode can cast long shadows over a city’s self-perception, its monuments, its street names, and the voices that tell its stories.

The occupation’s climax arrives with the December 1920 confrontation between D’Annunzio’s forces and the Italian military, a turning point that the film treats not as a finite end but as a hinge in memory—one that redirects present-day discussions about sovereignty, legitimacy, and the cost of national aspiration. After this confrontation, the film circles back to present-day Rijeka, returning to the residents who participated in the reenactments. By closing the loop with contemporary recollections, the film makes a case for memory as an ongoing process: a living dialogue between the city’s past and its present, continually reinterpreted by those who continue to tell its story.