Fiume o morte! (2025) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

After World War I, the status of Fiume (modern-day Rijeka) was left unresolved at the Paris Peace Conference, with both Italy and the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes claiming the city. Gabriele D'Annunzio, an Italian nationalist poet and war veteran, exploited this diplomatic ambiguity and led roughly 2,600 soldiers into Fiume in September 1919. His motivation combined Italian irredentism with a personal vision of a new political order, which he believed could only be realized through dramatic action rather than negotiation. The documentary Fiume o morte! frames this march as the opening move of a far larger political experiment.

• d'annunzio
• fiume occupation
• italian irredentism
• 1919
• paris peace conference
• rijeka

The Italian Regency of Carnaro was the quasi-state that D'Annunzio established in Fiume after taking the city in 1919. Rather than simply administering Fiume as an extension of Italy, he drafted a constitution known as the Charter of Carnaro, which blended nationalist, syndicalist, and corporatist ideas into an experimental political project. Elaborate ceremonies, uniforms, and rituals were used to legitimize his authority and give the occupation the appearance of sovereign statehood. The regency became a prototype that directly influenced the aesthetic and organizational vocabulary of Mussolini's later regime.

• italian regency of carnaro
• charter of carnaro
• dannunzio constitution
• corporatism
• fiume

Although D'Annunzio initially had the tacit support of some Italian politicians, the occupation quickly became an embarrassment for Rome. The Italian government was negotiating the Treaty of Rapallo with Yugoslavia and could not afford an unsanctioned military adventure that complicated those talks. As D'Annunzio's rhetoric grew more radical and his constitutional experiments drifted toward authoritarianism, Rome moved to cut off supplies and reassert control. This political friction is what eventually escalated into the December 1920 confrontation.

Foreshadowing: Early in the documentary, archival speeches already show D'Annunzio positioning himself against Rome rather than as a subordinate of it.

• d'annunzio
• italian government
• treaty of rapallo
• rome
• political conflict

After negotiations between Rome and D'Annunzio collapsed, the Italian navy blockaded Fiume and the Italian army prepared to march on the city. Facing overwhelming force and dwindling supplies, D'Annunzio ordered his followers to resist but then chose to flee by boat during a ceasefire, leaving his garrison behind. Italian troops entered Fiume on December 30, 1920, effectively ending the occupation. The retreat was widely viewed as a betrayal and became a defining moment in how the episode would later be remembered.

• december 1920
• italian military
• dannunzio retreat
• blockade of fiume
• end of occupation

By casting residents rather than professional actors, the film turns the reenactment into a community act of memory rather than a detached performance. The residents bring personal relationships to the streets, buildings, and monuments of their own city, which grounds the 1919 events in lived experience rather than abstraction. This choice also blurs the boundary between subject and participant, reflecting the film's larger argument that history is continuously shaped by those who inhabit the places where it happened.

• rijeka residents
• reenactment
• community memory
• documentary method
• local cast

D'Annunzio was a man of many public faces: poet, soldier, orator, political visionary, and proto-fascist demagogue. Rather than fixing him in a single embodiment, the film distributes his role across several performers, suggesting that D'Annunzio is not a stable historical figure but a figure refracted through memory, ideology, and the present-day residents who take him on. Each performer brings a different inflection, so the reenactment becomes an investigation into how a single person can be remembered in incompatible ways.

• d'annunzio
• multiple actors
• performance
• contested memory
• historical figure

The film repeatedly moves between contemporary Rijeka locations and the 1919–1920 events staged upon them, so that streets, buildings, and squares carry both their present function and their historical charge. Interviews and reflections from current residents are woven directly into the reenactments, suggesting that the occupation still shapes how Rijeka understands its identity, language politics, and relationship to Italy. By closing with these present-day voices, Fiume o morte! frames the occupation as an unresolved memory rather than a closed historical chapter.

• rijeka
• present-day
• memory
• italian occupation
• identity
• documentary

Showing the production process makes visible the editorial and ethical choices that go into reconstructing any history. Auditions reveal which residents feel drawn to which roles, while debates over which archival materials to stage expose disagreements about what the occupation actually meant. By foregrounding this work, the film argues that historical narrative is never neutral and that the way a story is told can be as politically significant as the events it describes.

• auditions
• rehearsals
• documentary process
• editorial choices
• historical reconstruction

Although D'Annunzio never formally joined the Fascist movement, his occupation of Fiume became a prototype for Mussolini's later seizure of power. The rituals, uniforms, balcony speeches, and corporatist constitution developed in Fiume directly influenced the aesthetic and organizational vocabulary of Italian fascism. Many of the arditi who served under D'Annunzio went on to form the squadristi, the paramilitary squads that enforced fascist rule in the early 1920s, making the Fiume episode a crucial prelude to the March on Rome.

• d'annunzio
• italian fascism
• mussolini
• arditi
• squadristi
• rise of fascism

Following D'Annunzio's retreat, Fiume was briefly administered by an Italian intergovernmental commission before being assigned to Italy under the 1924 Treaty of Rome. After World War II, the city was transferred to Yugoslavia and renamed Rijeka, which it remains today as part of Croatia. This layered succession of rulers is part of why the memory of D'Annunzio's occupation remains contested, since each political change rewrote the city's official history and reshaped what residents were encouraged to remember.

• fiume after 1920
• treaty of rome 1924
• rijeka
• yugoslavia
• croatia

Fiume had a majority Italian-speaking population but was strategically located on the Adriatic coast, making it economically vital as a port and symbolically central to the project of completing Italian unification. Italian nationalists argued that leaving Fiume outside the kingdom after the sacrifices of World War I would betray the wartime promise of terre irredente (unredeemed lands). For D'Annunzio, the city was also a stage on which to dramatize a larger vision of Italian greatness that went beyond conventional diplomacy.

• fiume
• italian nationalism
• terre irredente
• adriatic
• unification

Archival photographs and newsreels from 1919–1920 are placed alongside reenactments performed on the same streets where the original events occurred, often in matching compositions. The juxtaposition invites viewers to compare the documentary record with the present-day reconstruction, highlighting both what survives and what must be imagined. This technique keeps the past visibly mediated, reminding the audience that the reenactment is itself an interpretation rather than a transparent window onto history.

• archival footage
• reenactment
• documentary technique
• hybrid cinema
• historical reconstruction

Rather than presenting the occupation as a chronological historical narrative, Fiume o morte! organizes itself around how the event is remembered, debated, and performed in the present. The recurring cuts between past reenactments and present-day reflection force the audience to consider whose memories are foregrounded, which perspectives are included, and what is left out. By making memory its true subject, the documentary treats D'Annunzio's occupation as the occasion for a larger investigation rather than as an end in itself.

Foreshadowing: The opening interviews in present-day Rijeka already establish that memory, not history, will be the film's organizing principle.

• memory
• narrative structure
• present-day reflection
• documentary theme
• collective memory