Fiume o Morte!

A wonderfully entertaining – and educational – comedy docudrama from director Igor Bezinović, who grew up in the Croatian coastal town of Rijeka (once called Fiume), and in the film recruits present-day residents of the city to help – through reconstructions and reenactments, interwoven with archival footage – to tell the story of Italian fascist-poet Gabriele D’Annunzio’s occupation of the city in 1919-20. Over the course of 16 months, during what is regarded as one of the most bizarre militant sieges of all time, his official photography team captured over 10,000 images. It’s a fascinating and often very funny history lesson about an event that is almost too strange and bizarre to be true.