“A Battle for Storytelling”: Igor Bezinović Explores Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Proto-Fascist Legacy in IFFR-Bound ‘Fiume o Morte!’

After presenting A Brief Excursion in 2017, Igor Bezinović returns to Rotterdam to showcase his latest documentary, titled Fiume o Morte!. The Croatian director uses dramatic reconstructions and nonfiction interludes to explore the complex figure of Italian poet, playwright, and army officer Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938). Set against the backdrop of the rise of fascism, the film examines D’Annunzio’s controversial attempt to annex the city of Rijeka for Italy in the wake of World War I. In 1919, angered by the Paris Peace Conference’s decision to cede Rijeka to Yugoslavia, D’Annunzio took matters into his own hands, occupying the city and establishing a 16-month rule that would become a bizarre and unprecedented experiment in governance. 

In this captivating creative documentary, the director revisits this unique historical chapter a century later, involving Rijeka’s residents to tell their version of events. Combining archival footage, interviews, and reenactments, the film examines D’Annunzio’s ultranationalist ideals and their echoes in today’s world.

Fiume o Morte! is set to premiere in the Tiger competition at the Dutch festival, unspooling this year from January 30 to February 9. In his conversation with Documentary, Bezinović unpacks the making of his long-gestated project, its peculiar aesthetic choices, its ambitions, and its worryingly timely connections between past and present.

It has been an intellectually stimulating exchange, especially considering the fact I’m Italian myself. Back in my school days, I was always taught to study D’Annunzio primarily as a poet and playwright during literature classes, while his historical actions were reduced to avant-gardism and an eccentric personality in history lessons. This prism through which we’ve been encouraged to analyze his figure has never been one I personally accepted—and neither have many others like me. Bezinović explains so well why this view is inadequate, today more than ever.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

DOCUMENTARY: How did you embark on this project, and why did you choose to work on this subject today?

IGOR BEZINOVIĆ: My hometown is Rijeka, which the Italians call Fiume. When I was in my early 20s, I realized that I hadn’t learned anything about Gabriele D’Annunzio and his occupation of Rijeka in school. I first learned about it in a book titled Temporary Autonomous Zone (1991) by Hakim Bey. He’s an American anarchist and refers to the occupied Fiume as “a pirate utopia.” When I read his chapter on Fiume, I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my hometown because the story seemed so strange. I wondered: How come I never learned about it in my Croatian school? It’s important to highlight that there are both Croatian and Italian schools in town, and in the latter, they study D’Annunzio in literature and history classes.

However, in Croatian schools, which are the majority today, he’s not taught. Pretty soon, I realized that Hakim Bey’s research was rather superficial. He’s not a historian, and he presented the occupation from a narrow perspective, focusing on the aspects that interested him, particularly the “pirate” side of the city’s economy. After that, I read Claudia Salaris’ 2002 book Alla festa della rivoluzione (in English, At the Revolution’s Party). She also explores only the avant-garde aspects of D’Annunzio’s occupation, which has become the mainstream interpretation of his figure over the past 20 years. So I wanted to understand why the Italians highlight his avant-gardism, while what I’ve heard from my fellow citizens is that D’Annunzio was a fascist. This contrast drew me to the subject many years ago.

In 2011, my grandmother told me she had a friend who had seen D’Annunzio in person. Back then, I interviewed this man, who was 97 years old. He told me how, when he was six, he saw D’Annunzio and his officers in Fiume’s main corso. D’Annunzio shouted something to him and a friend of his, but they got scared and ran away. That was my first personal “touch” with the topic. In 2015, I began my research slowly—but steadily—by securing some development funding, and I started filming in 2018.

D: How did the idea of involving Italian and Croatian residents in such a peculiar fashion come about?

IB: From the start, I knew I wanted to create a story that could be retold among us. There’s much confusion about D’Annunzio, and his true story remains untold. I realized I didn’t want it to be a fiction film or a historical documentary. I wanted it to be an author-driven film with a clear concept. One of the key ideas was that the citizens had to be involved. In 2020, we published an open call in the local media, inviting people to take part. The applications I was most interested in were the ones where people said, “Oh, this is a historical film about our hometown! I want to be part of it because I want to create a story with you.” When we began filming in 2021, we already had a huge database of people we wanted to involve, but we also approached others on the streets. I worked with fantastic casting directors, and people were always welcomed to jump on our truck. It’s been like a community project.

D: How did you pick the events you re-enact throughout the film? There are so many facts about D’Annunzio, including some unverified ones...

IB: Another clear idea I had was to follow a “nerdish” chronology, though that’s something you wouldn’t expect from a creative documentary. But I really wanted to make things chronologically linear. I knew I wanted to start from September 12, the day of the occupation, and end with its aftermath. I worked on selecting the scenes with many historical consultants, both Italians and Croatians, including Federico Carlo Simonelli and Ivan Jeličić. By talking to them, my fellow citizens, and myself, I managed to narrow the film down to some basic plot points.

D: You take a playful approach when it comes to re-enacting those events, mixing modernity and history throughout the film. Could you elaborate on this choice?

IB: Conceptually, I knew I wanted to draw parallels between the present and the past, though they wouldn’t be explicit or clear at first. I just wanted to leave it at a level of impression, where the viewer asks: What does this mean today? Working on set had many open possibilities because we worked on real locations and decided to set the whole film in today’s Rijeka. So, for example, in a place where we try to restage a certain photograph, if we have a socialist skyscraper in the background, it stays there. These moments were deliberate, and we also wanted to show people wearing historical costumes. In terms of production design, we only wanted to keep some props from 1919/1920.

D: It’s been 14 years since you started working on this project. Meanwhile, the rise of the far right continues at a frightening pace, hitting new heights—I think of Elon Musk’s recent Roman salute. I was wondering to what extent all of these recent events have affected the making of your documentary…
IB: I think the need to talk about the rise of the extreme right has always been underlying the project. It wasn’t the main “motif,” but it certainly touches on the right, populism, and propaganda as well. But it’s also about storytelling, the conflict between past and present. Seeing Musk not try to hide the fact that he’s provoking by using the Roman salute really scares me. It’s shocking because this film I’ve been working on for so long is going to show the first filmed Roman salute. It happened three years before the March on Rome, on September 20, 1919, coinciding with the day Garibaldi entered Rome. D’Annunzio organized a big parade, and British Pathé reporters filmed it. Before that, a Roman salute was seen in Cabiria (1914), but that was a fiction film. So, having Musk do what he did about 10 days before our premiere is something I could never have imagined.

D: Are you planning to show this film in schools?
IB: I would really love to show it in schools! We’ll have a theatrical distribution deal in Italy, and we’ll see how the Italian audience reacts. In Croatia, I’ve already received offers to screen it in schools. In Italy, this is such a controversial topic, and I’m excited to see the reactions of the Italian audience, who already have [preconceived] ideas about what a film centered on D’Annunzio should look like. I’m really curious to see if they’ll accept it, or if at least some of them will.

D: I’m sure there will be teachers in Italian schools who will want to show it to their students.
IB: We call it the “battle for storytelling.” We can let the Vittoriale Foundation [Ed.: the body managing the titular complex of buildings overlooking Lake Garda, where D’Annunzio lived from 1922 until his death; today, the estate serves as a mansion and the Foundation promotes D’Annunzio’s cultural legacy] tell their story, but this is definitely not a story they would sponsor. They were our partners in the sense that they sold us the archives and allowed us to shoot on their premises, but our interpretations of D’Annunzio’s occupation are not similar at all. 

Davide Abbatescianni is a film critic and journalist based in Rome. He works as an International Reporter for Cineuropa and regularly contributes to publications such as Variety, New Scientist, The New Arab, Business Doc Europe, and the Nordisk Film & TV Fond website. He also serves as a programmer for the Torino Film Festival, one of Italy’s largest cinematic gatherings.