Fiume o morte!

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In the coastal city now known as Rijeka, director Igor Bezinović wanders through streets layered with history, asking ordinary residents what they remember — or think they remember — about Gabriele D'Annunzio, the Italian poet and nationalist whose bold actions once put this port at the center of European attention. Their answers are hesitant, fragmentary, sometimes surprising, painting a picture of a figure whose presence lingers in faded plaques, whispered family stories, and the texture of daily life. What emerges is less a portrait of certainty than a meditation on how a city holds — or forgets — its past.

The film weaves together archival photographs, measured voiceover, and staged reenactments performed largely by the city's own inhabitants. Locals step into the shoes of soldiers, dignitaries, and even D'Annunzio himself, transforming familiar corners of Rijeka into a living collage where history and memory blur. Cameras also linger on the often-unseen labor behind such a project: auditions, rehearsals, debates about tone and truth, and the delicate negotiations that shape how a community chooses to represent itself. The result is a documentary that feels both intimate and inquisitive, less interested in delivering verdicts than in tracing the process by which stories get told at all.

At the heart of the inquiry lies a provocative question: was D'Annunzio an egotistical dreamer chasing a personal kingdom, a sincere utopian intoxicated by poetry and nationhood, or something darker — a proto-fascist whose ambitions helped pave the way for a more devastating future? The film offers no rush to judgment, instead letting archival spectacle, contemporary reflection, and the charged atmosphere of post–Great War Europe sit uneasily side by side. As the reenactors rehearse speeches and military rituals in settings that locals pass every day, the past feels less like a closed chapter and more like an ongoing conversation — one that the present-day city is still learning how to have.