On 12 September 1919, a troop of some three hundred soldiers under the leadership of the flamboyant war loving Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio swooped into the Northern- Adriatic port town of Fiume, now Rijeka, wanting to annex the city to Italy. Over the course of the next 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. A century later, Rijeka-born filmmaker Igor Bezinović, along with some three hundred citizens, orchestrates a direct-action history lesson focused on the siege and its modern-day implications. The communal undertaking in historical empowerment not only revisits both facts and legends but also puts forward a social counterweight to D’Annunzio’s occupational agenda. It critically examines the tactics of performance, manipulation and propaganda employed during the siege and creates new viewpoints, narratives, and experiences, it uncovers nationalist historiographies as effective and obstinate ideological instruments, no matter how absurd or ridiculous. The result is a cinematic journey deadly serious yet hilariously surreal.

Winner of the Critics’ Prize and the Tiger Award for best film at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.