Fiume o Morte!

The bizarre military campaign of Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, who occupied present day Rijeka (then known as Fiume) after World War I, ranks among the strangest episodes in European history. In the city, he proclaimed his own state and declared himself its leader. His “empire” as a poetic dictator lasted 16 months before it was brought to an end by the army of his native Italy. D’Annunzio, whose aesthetics and politics would later inspire Benito Mussolini, carefully cultivated his own legend, having his rule documented in thousands of period photographs. Rijeka born filmmaker Igor Bezinović subversively revives this history, weaving together archival materials, irony, and a contemporary perspective to explore the roots of fascism, moving fluidly between past and present.