“Fiume o morte!,” directed by Igor Bezinović, was awarded the FIPRESCI Documentary Grand Prix Thursday during the opening ceremony of the 23rd Millennium Docs Against Gravity, the second-largest documentary film festival in Europe.
The award honors the best documentary film of the past year, selected by a jury of members of FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics.
A screening of the film, followed by a Q&A with the director, will take place at the festival on Saturday, hosted by Paola Casella, an Italian film critic and vice president of FIPRESCI.
The film was shot in 2019, 100 years after the fascist occupation of Fiume in 1919 by Gabriele D’Annunzio. Bezinović teamed up with 300 residents to create a subversive, punk-style reenactment that “dismantles nationalist myths and exposes the spectacle of political performativity,” the festival said.
The film has already received the European Film Award for Best European Documentary and was recognized at the Rotterdam festival, where it won both the Tiger Award in the main competition, and the FIPRESCI Jury Prize.
The other films nominated for the FIPRESCI Documentary Grand Prix were “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” dir. Mstyslav Chernov; “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” dir. David Borenstein, Pavel Talanki; “Orwell: 2+2=5”, dir. Raoul Peck; and “The Perfect Neighbor,” dir. Geeta Gandbhir.
Starting this year, MDAG will also host a three-member FIPRESCI jury, which will present its own award to a film in the Main Competition. The winner will be announced on May 14 during the awards ceremony.
Millennium Docs Against Gravity is on the list of festivals qualifying for the Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Feature category and also recommends films for the European Film Awards.
The 23rd edition of Millennium Docs Against Gravity will be held from May 8 to 17 in theaters across seven cities (Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdynia, Poznań, Katowice, Łódź and Bydgoszcz), and online from May 19 to June 1 at mdag.pl.
English (US) ·