Classic English Futurism & Fiume

Futurism & Fiume · Unit 6 of 6

The city plays itself

A hundred years after D'Annunzio, a film-maker from the same city asked his neighbours to act out the sixteen months of Fiume, photograph by photograph, in the same streets. In this final unit you will read how Fiume o morte! was made and what critics said about it, turn a 1919 photograph into a scene, and pitch a film of your own.

  • Reading
  • Grammar: reporting what critics say · imperatives
  • Pronunciation: word stress
  • Writing a scene and a pitch
  • Oral presentation

01Watch: the film

Fiume o morte! (2025) · trailer · International Film Festival Rotterdam

Fiume o morte! (2025) · English teaser · Restart

02Reading: how the film was made

Fiume o morte! (2025) · written for this lesson

1. Igor Bezinović was born in 1983 in Rijeka, the city the Italians called Fiume. He studied philosophy, sociology and comparative literature in Zagreb, and then film directing at the Academy of Dramatic Art. His first long documentary, The Blockade (2012), followed the student protests in Croatia in 2009. He first read about D'Annunzio's Fiume in a book by an American anarchist writer, who called the occupied city "a pirate utopia". The story seemed so strange that Bezinović was not sure it was about his own home town.

2. He began his research in 2015 and filmed his first tests in 2018. He found that D'Annunzio's photography section had taken more than ten thousand photographs during the sixteen months. Bezinović decided not to make a normal history , and not a costume drama either. Instead, he asked about three hundred people from Rijeka, among them rubbish collectors and war veterans, to the old photographs in the same streets and squares. Six different men from Rijeka play D'Annunzio. People who speak the old Fiume dialect of Italian tell the story as .

3. The film does not hide how it was made. Bezinović, often the narrator, gives instructions to his amateur actors on camera, and the preparations for each scene become part of the film. The story follows the events in strict order, from D'Annunzio's arrival in September 1919 to the end of the occupation. The film is 112 minutes long, in Croatian and Italian, and was made by Croatia, Italy and Slovenia together.

4. Fiume o morte! won the Tiger Award, the top prize at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, in 2025, and Best Documentary at the 38th European Film Awards. Croatia chose it as its film for the Academy Awards.

Fiume, 20 September 1919. One of the photographs from D'Annunzio's sixteen months. Photograph: Betti. In section 05 you will turn it into a scene.
Write at least 20 characters first.
Write at least 20 characters first.
Write at least 20 characters first.

03Reading: what the critics said

Film critics write . Read what five of them wrote about Fiume o morte!

"Forthright, unflinching and very funny."

"A gloriously punk spin on the historical documentary genre."

Screen Daily

"A novel approach to historical drama, realized with daring, skill, and sardonic wit."

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

"An ingenious reclamation of place and history."

Pat Mullen, POV Magazine

"Bezinović masterfully deploys playful irreverence to transform rigorous research into a living, shared resource."

Sight and Sound, British Film Institute
Write at least 20 characters first.
Write at least 20 characters first.

04Grammar: reporting what critics say

Reporting verbs

PatternExample
Use the present simple to report what a review says. A review is still there to read.Screen Daily says that the film is very funny.
call + object + adjective / nounThe New Yorker calls it a novel approach to historical drama.
describe + object + as + adjective / nounPOV Magazine describes it as an ingenious reclamation of history.
praise + object + for + noun / -ingSight and Sound praises Bezinović for his playful irreverence.

Careful: describe needs as (describes it as funny, not describes it funny). Call never takes as (calls it funny, not calls it as funny). With a newspaper or a critic, use -s: Screen Daily says, Brody calls.

Practice: report the review

05Writing: from photograph to scene

Bezinović turned old photographs into scenes. Now you do it. Look closely at the photograph of 20 September 1919 in section 02: the officers in the street, the soldiers with their backs to the camera, the people crowded on the balcony, the flags, the street sign.

Write the scene in three parts, the way the film does: a narrator speaks to the audience, the director gives instructions to the amateur actors, and then three people in the photograph speak.

0 words

06Pronunciation: word stress in film words

Many film words are long, and the can move when the word changes: PHOtograph, phoTOgrapher, photoGRAPHic. For each word, tap the syllable that is stressed. Then check, and tap 🔊 to hear it.

07Writing: pitch your film

A is a short, persuasive description of a film that you want to make. Imagine you will make a hybrid documentary like Bezinović's, about a strange or forgotten moment in the history of your own city. Fill in the four parts.

0 words

08Speaking: your pitch

In class, you will present on camera, alone, in about three minutes.

  1. Read your narration. Read the narrator's part of your scene from section 05, slowly, like the narrators of the film.
  2. Pitch your film. Present your pitch from section 07. Start with your one-sentence logline.
  3. Persuade. Look into the camera for your question to the audience. Stress the most important words.
  4. Report one critic. Say which review in section 03 you would most like your own film to receive, using a reporting verb: I would like Screen Daily to call my film…
  5. Answer questions. Your teacher will ask one or two questions about your film.

09Looking back

You have now met poets, painters, dancers, puppet-makers, musicians, actors and a film-maker, on the far right and the far left.

10Vocabulary

The twelve words to learn from this unit. Tap 🔊 to hear each one.

11Send your work

Words