“Unique in structure and enthralling in how it blends so many different ideas together, the film captures the spirit of both the past and the present.”

Does a city change along with its name? This is a question posed by Igor Bezinović, who is fascinated by the history of Rijeka, a seaside city situated on the Croatian coast. Today, it is considered one of the most historically important sites in the region, and a major contributor to the nation’s economy. However, this is not what the director is focused on, with his attention instead taking us back to the end of the First World War, when the city was known as Fiume, and was a highly contested region that changed identities constantly over the years as a result of new leaders taking charge. Perhaps the most notorious was Gabriele D’Annunzio, a poet and philosopher who decided to try his hand at governance, and single-handedly facilitated what many consider to be the birth of Italian fascism since his policies and writings would become highly influential in the coming years. Bezinović uses this as the foundation for Fiume o morte!, a daring and provocative hybrid documentary that covers the brief but memorable reign of D’Annunzio, which lasted just over a year but was incredibly influential to the changing sociopolitical climate of Europe as it headed into the post-war period, and which was as peculiar as it was unnerving. A fascinating examination of this city and the changes it endured during this brief moment and how it relates to the ongoing march of cultural progress taking place throughout the 20^th century, the film captures something quite elusive, rendering it in extraordinary detail and with a wicked sense of humor.

Bezinović has never been particularly interested in playing by the rules – his previous works all embody a specific kind of artistic freedom in exploring a range of subjects that have informed so many of his daring directorial decisions. Fiume o morte! is a clear passion project for the director, as his fascination with this material manifests in a terrific attempt at provoking conversation through revisiting the past. Rather than crafting the film as a traditional documentary, in which the facts are presented directly and in a seemingly logical order, he chooses a more original approach, combining archival footage and existing fragments of the past with his bespoke reconstructions, creating a multimodal historical odyssey. Drawing from several sources – including firsthand accounts and D’Annunzio’s political manifesto (which is recited with thick layers of ironic sarcasm, his terrifying attempts at glorifying what we would come to know as fascism being rendered almost comical as a result) – Bezinović creates an oddly enthralling account of this period in the past. Told through a combination of words, photographs and numbers, all of which are essential to its nature, Fiume o morte! proves to be a film that evades any attempt at categorization. A traditional approach might have been more informative, but it is clear that this film is attempting to do more than simply relay the facts, and instead is in search of something innovative, and certainly more intriguing than an orthodox approach would have allowed. 

While formally quite innovative and daring, the brilliance of Fiume o morte! lies not in how it is made, but rather in what is being examined in the process. For any population that exists in the shadow of a storied history, there are efforts to reclaim their identity through engaging critically with the past, which is the precise intention of the director as he cobbles this film together from various intriguing fragments. Bezinović is essentially telling two stories in tandem – one is a biographical account of D’Annunzio and his meteoric but brief rise to power, while the other is a story of the people of Fiume and Rijeka, looking at the populations that lived under the two different city names, and therefore experienced life very differently. The film doesn’t cover a particularly extensive timeline – D’Annunzio was duce for a mere eighteen months. However, in choosing to center the film around a concentrated period of time, the director can provide fascinating detail, exploring the past by combining the words of this notorious leader and those of his detractors, both past and present. This amounts to a uniquely crafted documentary in which different perspectives are offered as it voyages towards a specific narrative destination.

Throughout Fiume o morte! Bezinović asks several questions. One of the most significant is based around the act of using art to recreate history – is it done to pay tribute to the past and its people, or is it done as a means to make sense of a moment that defines a culture but has never truly been understood? The influence left by people like D’Annunzio and other cultural conquerors is far greater than many would like to admit, and rather than giving him any credit for how he impacted generations of people, the director is instead focused on creating a more vivid and compelling depiction of the aftermath of his short but influential reign. A city is not just a location, but a vibrant, living entity that changes as time progresses and new cultural standards weave in and out over the decades. Fiume o morte! is as much a portrait of the city as of the man who set out to govern it through force, as told by a director whose curiosity leads to a playful and informative work, constructed through many small details that ultimately amount to a subversive and experimental blend of fact and fiction. Unique in structure and enthralling in how it blends so many different ideas together, the film captures the spirit of both the past and the present, focusing on the ways in which they influence one another in the ongoing quest to understand the history of a place and its people, which constantly evolve and provide us with unforgettable insights into a mesmerizing and oddly entertaining historical moment.