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Fiume O Morte!
Croatia, Italy, Slovenia, 2025 (112 min.)
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In Croatian, Italian, Fiuman (Italian dialect) with English subtitles
Die yes, live no! This was the motto of the flamboyant Italian officer, poet, dandy, aristocrat and fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio. In 1919, he decided to single-handedly occupy the Croatian city, which the Croats call Rijeka, but which the Italians call Fiume. The peace conference in Paris after the First World War had proposed that Fiume should be handed over to Yugoslavia, but a furious D’Annunzio was determined to prevent this. In the film modern-day residents of Rijeka are cast and interviewed and asked to reconstruct the dramatic occupation. But as the bizarre occupation resurfaces in the crowded streets of the city, it evolves into a thought-provoking film about how absurd, fascist ideas are always just an arm’s length away.
“The movement of memory goes both ways—not only does “Fiume o Morte!” conjure the past, it pulls the events of the past into the present tense, conveying an eerie feeling of witnessing them occurring in real time.”
—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
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