Winner of both the Tiger Award and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2025 Rotterdam Film Festival, named Best Documentary at the 2026 European Film Awards, and Croatia’s submission to the 98th Academy Awards for Best International Feature, FIUME O MORTE! is a defiantly punk direct-action history lesson — deadly serious yet hilariously surreal.
In 1919, the Italian poet, dandy, and glorifier of war Gabriele D’Annunzio occupied the city of Fiume (now Croatia’s Rijeka). Incensed that the city — long part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — would be ceded to the newly formed Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes despite its large Italian population, D’Annunzio gathered a few thousand troops and invaded, intending to annex the city to Italy. Italy wanted no part of this folly, and after 15 months, D’Annunzio and his forces retreated.
A century later, Bezinović recruits hundreds of Rijeka locals to recreate scenes from the siege on the streets and in the buildings where events occurred. The citizens of Fiume retell and reinterpret this 16-month occupation — regarded as one of the most bizarre military sieges of all time. D’Annunzio emerges as a vain, image-obsessed trailblazer of political showmanship (which should ring a bell or two), adapting performative propaganda into a descent into chaos that is shockingly prescient.
“As unusual as it is revelatory… realized with daring, skill, and sardonic wit.” — Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Partly a comic opera and partly a chilling message from the past.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“A timely reminder that laughing at fascists is a form of resistance.” — Wendy Ide, Screen Daily
