CPH:DOX 2025 - Fiume o Morte!

Die yes, live no! This was the motto of the flamboyant Italian officer, poet, dandy, aristocrat and fascist Gabriele D'Annunzio. In 1919, he decided to single-handedly occupy the Croatian city, which the Croats call Rijeka, but which the Italians call Fiume. The peace conference in Paris after the First World War had proposed that Fiume should be handed over to Yugoslavia, but a furious D'Annunzio was determined to prevent this. 

So with his dedicated section of the Italian army, he took the port city and occupied it for 16 months. 16 crazy months full of poetry, dynamite, cocaine, sunbathing, machine guns, endless speeches, football - and which ends with the bald D'Annunzio declaring war on his own country. 

In the imaginative and deeply original 'Fiume o Morte!', modern-day residents of Rijeka are cast and interviewed and asked to reconstruct the dramatic occupation. But as the bizarre occupation resurfaces in the crowded streets of the city, it evolves into a thought-provoking film about how absurd, fascist ideas are always just an arm's length away. An enigmatic hybrid movie and the funniest and most unorthodox history lesson of the year.