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With great flair and originality, Igor Bezinović recounts an incredible but little known episode of European history from his home town of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), revealing the stirrings of European fascism in the wake of World War I.
In 1919, Italian poet and military officer Gabriele D’Annunzio led a rogue, short-lived and ultranationalist occupation of Fiume. Over a century later, Bezinović revisits this strange historical episode, blending archive, reenactment and interviews with residents in the present, interrogating how a city remembers and forgets, and the enduring presence of European fascism.
A stark and peculiar lesson in the history that is not past, Fiume O Morte! (Fiume or Death!) won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2025 and is Croatia’s submission for the Oscars.