DIRECTOR: Igor Bezinovic
STARRING: documentary
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 52 minutes
LANGUAGE: Croatian, Italian, English
PLOT: Through striking dramatic reconstructions and incisive documentary reflections, the film channels the spirit of Italian poet, playwright, journalist, aristocrat, and army officer Gabriele D’Annunzio, capturing his fervent vision of a new nation amid the volatile aftermath of the First World War and the unsettling rise of nascent fascism that accompanied it.
GENRE: Comedy
FILMING LOCATION: Rijeka, Croatia
To check out all previous submissions for Croatia, click HERE.
STARRING: documentary
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 52 minutes
LANGUAGE: Croatian, Italian, English
PLOT: Through striking dramatic reconstructions and incisive documentary reflections, the film channels the spirit of Italian poet, playwright, journalist, aristocrat, and army officer Gabriele D’Annunzio, capturing his fervent vision of a new nation amid the volatile aftermath of the First World War and the unsettling rise of nascent fascism that accompanied it.
GENRE: Comedy
FILMING LOCATION: Rijeka, Croatia
To check out all previous submissions for Croatia, click HERE.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Whoever is not with me is against me. Whoever is not with us is against us."
Igor Bezinovic’s Fiume o morte! is the rare historical film that refuses to treat history as a sealed-off museum exhibit. Instead, the past leaks directly into the present, often with messy and amusing consequences. The film revisits the bizarre moment after World War I when Gabriele D’Annunzio, a poet intoxicated by his own theatricality, marched into Fiume and declared it the laboratory of a new political future. Bezinovic doesn’t simply recount this episode; he resurrects it in the streets, squares, and living rooms of modern Rijeka. Ordinary citizens slip into the costumes of soldiers and dreamers, performing acts their own ancestors might have witnessed. The result is a communal ritual of remembering that feels alive, unpredictable, and strangely intimate.
Stylistically, the film is a controlled collision. History lessons crash into absurd cabaret. Earnest testimony rubs shoulders with cheeky reenactment. One moment we observe a scholar explaining the geopolitical stakes; the next, a parade of amateur revolutionaries shouts slogans with gleeful exaggeration. This tonal oscillation isn’t random, it mirrors D’Annunzio himself, a man who fused performance art with political ambition. The humor invites us in, but beneath the laughter runs a steady current of unease: the sense that spectacle has teeth.
What makes the film especially compelling is how firmly it roots these historical reenactments in the everyday texture of the city. We sense the architecture as a witness, façades that once echoed with fanaticism now backdrop supermarket carts and bicycles. Members of the community play both historical figures and versions of themselves, collapsing the distance between then and now. This blurring is more than a stylistic trick; Bezinovic wants us to recognize that history isn’t something that happens elsewhere. It lingers beneath our feet.
By its final movement, the film’s playfulness ripens into something far more sobering. Fiume o morte! argues that fascism did not begin as a strict ideology but as a seductive performance: a fantasy of renewal embraced before its consequences were understood. Through reenactment, Bezinovic shows how easily people can be swept up by charisma, pageantry, and the promise of belonging. The film’s main point is chillingly clear: the past is not past. Whenever societies forget how quickly dreams of national grandeur can curdle into cruelty, they risk staging the same show again, only this time, with higher stakes and fewer excuses for not seeing where the script leads.
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Whoever is not with me is against me. Whoever is not with us is against us."
Igor Bezinovic’s Fiume o morte! is the rare historical film that refuses to treat history as a sealed-off museum exhibit. Instead, the past leaks directly into the present, often with messy and amusing consequences. The film revisits the bizarre moment after World War I when Gabriele D’Annunzio, a poet intoxicated by his own theatricality, marched into Fiume and declared it the laboratory of a new political future. Bezinovic doesn’t simply recount this episode; he resurrects it in the streets, squares, and living rooms of modern Rijeka. Ordinary citizens slip into the costumes of soldiers and dreamers, performing acts their own ancestors might have witnessed. The result is a communal ritual of remembering that feels alive, unpredictable, and strangely intimate.
Stylistically, the film is a controlled collision. History lessons crash into absurd cabaret. Earnest testimony rubs shoulders with cheeky reenactment. One moment we observe a scholar explaining the geopolitical stakes; the next, a parade of amateur revolutionaries shouts slogans with gleeful exaggeration. This tonal oscillation isn’t random, it mirrors D’Annunzio himself, a man who fused performance art with political ambition. The humor invites us in, but beneath the laughter runs a steady current of unease: the sense that spectacle has teeth.
What makes the film especially compelling is how firmly it roots these historical reenactments in the everyday texture of the city. We sense the architecture as a witness, façades that once echoed with fanaticism now backdrop supermarket carts and bicycles. Members of the community play both historical figures and versions of themselves, collapsing the distance between then and now. This blurring is more than a stylistic trick; Bezinovic wants us to recognize that history isn’t something that happens elsewhere. It lingers beneath our feet.
By its final movement, the film’s playfulness ripens into something far more sobering. Fiume o morte! argues that fascism did not begin as a strict ideology but as a seductive performance: a fantasy of renewal embraced before its consequences were understood. Through reenactment, Bezinovic shows how easily people can be swept up by charisma, pageantry, and the promise of belonging. The film’s main point is chillingly clear: the past is not past. Whenever societies forget how quickly dreams of national grandeur can curdle into cruelty, they risk staging the same show again, only this time, with higher stakes and fewer excuses for not seeing where the script leads.
