Fiume o morte!

Not Rated | 1 hr 52 mins | Documentary | 2025
Croatia, Italy, Slovenia | In Croatian and Italian with English subtitles

Limited Run

Saturday-Monday, January 24-26

Note: Release dates are subject to change

The past is present and fact made fiction in Igor Bezinović’s Fiume o morte!, a high-energy hybrid documentary about early-20th-century Italian warrior-poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. D’Annunzio — a model for Mussolini — ruled Rijeka, Croatia, with an iron fist for 16-months, and director Bezinović elaborately re-stages Rijeka’s strange, bloody era in a duet between filmmaking and history.

Melding meticulous research, archival footage, a rotating cast of informal re-enactors, the film evokes Wes Anderson, Straub-Huillet, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up while holding an uneasy mirror to contemporary fears (and the absurdity) of fascism, at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise around the world. Winner of the top prize at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Croatia’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards.

“A novel approach to historical drama, realized with daring, skill, and sardonic wit.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“An ingenious reclamation of place and history… evokes the danger of forgetting history—as much as we’d sometimes like to.” —Pat Mullen, POV Magazine