Igor Bezinović’s ‘Fiume o morte!’ Wins Rotterdam Tiger Award, ‘The Tree of Authenticity’ and ‘Im Haus meiner Eltern’ Take Jury Prizes

variety.com:

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor Igor Bezinović’s hybrid documentary “Fiume o morte!” was awarded the Tiger Award, the top prize of the International Film Festival Rotterdam worth €40,000, on Friday evening.

Bezinović’s film captures the spirit of Italian poet, playwright, journalist, aristocrat and army officer Gabriele D’Annunzio — who in 1919 occupied the city of Fiume — through dramatic reconstruction and documentary interludes.

In their statement, the Tiger jury said: “At times of the rise of ultra-nationalism within a contemporary European context, the film playfully grapples with the past not as a closed chapter, but as a living reality.

Unless we engage the past as a living present it will insist in ways that are not only a warning for the future, but threaten the very possibility of equitable co-existence and a life livable for not only those that have recourse to assert power.” “Recourse to ultra nationalism, and even fascism, resides in the core of national identity, it is already inside of us as a form of knowledge we should be afraid to forget, and continuously need to process in order to forgo its grip,” continued the statement. “It is a reality we remember from movies, literature, billboards and books.