Amrum

 

Fatih Akin with Hark Bohm

Director Fatih Akin

Akin with Matthias Schweighöfer and Diane Kruger

Akin with Hark Bohm

Screenwriter Hark Bohm

AMRUM        B+                                                                                                                      Germany  (93 mi)  2025  d: Fatih Akin

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT                                                                                                      by Fatih Akin

Hark Bohm wrote a screenplay full of poetry, grace, and suspense — Amrum. When he realized that he would no longer be able to make the film himself, he asked me. I hesitated — after all, I am an auteur filmmaker who must always find a personal connection to the material. In any case, the screenplay had to be rewritten, as it was much too long. Since Hark writes everything by hand, his own revision would have taken too much time. I offered to take on the rewrite. Hark agreed. In the process, the story grew close to my heart. It was like adopting a child — at some point, you no longer question it, you simply love it unconditionally.

At first, I conceived the whole thing as an experimental film: how can I manage to shoot a Hark Bohm film? I revisited his work, analyzing his camera angles, his direction of actors, his editing — and above all, his attitude. But the closer the shoot approached, the more I realized that this was nonsense. I have to make my own film!

From that realization, everything started to fall into place. The films that came to mind when Hark first told me the story were Bicycle Thieves and Shoeshine by Vittorio De Sica. The scenes where Nanning searches for driftwood at night made me think of The Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton. The whole film was supposed to breathe the spirit of Stand by Me by Rob Reiner — thus, my cinematic upbringing became the first personal connection to the film. Others followed.

But the most important realization came to me shortly before completion earlier this year: friends who had been living in a kind of Disneyland version of Germany, have started talking about leaving the country. But Goethe said: "Where we are educated, there is our homeland." And I don't want to leave it to the Nazis.

Amrum tells of expulsion from paradise. For me, the film became a mission — a journey into the depths of my "German soul." Perhaps it was the last lesson that Master Hark Bohm taught me: cinema remains an eternal mystery.

There are very few films that accurately depict Nazi sympathizers with any degree of humanity, yet this is no ordinary film, introduced as “A Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin,” who adapts a first-time, autobiographical novel by the same name based on the childhood memories of German actor, author, and film director Hark Bohm, a long-standing friend of the director, most closely associated as an actor in a dozen films made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died just two months after the film was released.  Both deeply connected to Hamburg, Bohm originally intended to direct the movie himself, but his declining health forced him to hand over the project to Akin.  All the more emotionally powerful because of its dramatic restraint, there’s a lot of heart and soul in this picture, which distinguishes it from others, beautifully blending a tender coming-of-age story about the loss of innocence with the barbarism of the adult world, set against the waning days of the Third Reich, defined by a crushing ideological collapse and moral disorientation, becoming a painterly canvas that accentuates the psychological toll of the characters and thoughtfully expands filmmaker Fatih Akin’s career-spanning exploration of German identity.  Spending most of his career focused on non-ethnic Germans and their experience in German society, this is inspired by Hark Bohm’s own published autobiographical memories growing up as the son of a high-ranking Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) officer during the final days of World War II on Amrum, part of the sparsely populated North Frisian Islands in the North Sea.  It took considerable effort on the part of the entire country to acknowledge mistakes and correct the unspeakable historical sins of the past, where acknowledging guilt is part of a pervasive collective sentiment present in the German national consciousness to the point of becoming an essential part of its postwar identity, which has often been used to justify paradoxical positions, such as the unconditional defense of a genocidal state like Israel, using the memory of the Holocaust as a moral shield against any form of valid criticism or questioning.  With their home in Hamburg destroyed in an Allied bombing campaign, he and his family were forced to relocate to the safer environment of a quiet, rural island, joining others from the “mainland” who have evacuated from their bombed-out cities.  Given very limited distribution, told from the vantage point of twelve-year old Nanning (newcomer Jasper Billerbeck, who was discovered during a sailing training in Lower Saxony, though Bohm was actually only six at the time, too young for the conscientiously-evolving thoughts entrusted to him), who is living with his staunch Nazi-supporting mother Hille (Laura Tonke) in the later stages of pregnancy, his younger brother Macker (Tjard Nissen), and his Aunt Ena (Lisa Hagmeister), spending most of his time working in the potato fields of a nearby farm of Tessa (Diane Kruger), an ardent anti-fascist, who rewards him with milk and food for the chickens,  As a squadron of Allied bombers can be seen overhead, a new group of tattered refugees arrives by horse cart, as the Russians are reportedly only 50 kilometers from Berlin, mostly stared at as outsiders, and while they are treated differently, not really wanted or appreciated, they are all Germans. 

A quiet, atmospherically dense drama that is less politically than humanly told, remarkably distinct in its perspective, essentially a film about maturation, disappointment, and the search for a place in a world in upheaval, Akin beautifully establishes the daily rhythm of life on the tiny island, unraveling in small vignettes that have an accumulative power, becoming something uniquely different, yet also dramatically powerful, turning collective war trauma into a chamber play that is emotionally and psychologically complex.  Nanning has a nearby friend in Tessa’s son Hermann (Kian Köppke), about his same age, who borrows his copy of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, where they compare notes about what is considered an Amrumer islander, as they have their own language and history, with historical ties to Denmark, renowned as skilled whalers and seafarers, though today their economy has shifted almost entirely from seafaring to agriculture, sustainable tourism, and nature preservation, as the island sits within the protected Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park near the border with Denmark.  Offering freedom and adventure, Nanning hardly goes to school anymore, especially since he is teased there by the other children, who reject him for not being from Amrum and not speaking “their” northern Frisian dialect (the first movie to extensively feature Öömrang), as he was born in Hamburg, continually viewed as an outsider, just like the other war refugees, discovering, even from a child’s eyes, that hatred is part of the human condition.  His parents are fanatical Nazis, where a portrait of Adolf Hitler hangs on the wall in his kitchen, a swastika flag flies outside the house, with his mother being a Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM leader (female branch of the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany), his father a Nazi SS Officer who has written numerous books on eugenics, his Uncle Onno (Jan Georg Schütte) is a German Socialist Party board member on the neighboring island of Föhr, while Nanning himself is a member of the Hitler Youth, and proudly wears the uniform.  Caught up in the ambiguity of trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t align with what he’s been taught, Nanning learns about his parents’ hideous convictions and grotesque past, as Akin excels in slowly doling out information, heightening the disarmingly poetic visual style while prolonging the suspense.  One of the few figures Nanning can look up to is his Uncle Theo (Matthias Schweighöfer), who gifted him a whale’s tooth knife before he left for New York City (noting that more Amrumers live in New York City than there are on Amrum).  Over the course of the film, Nanning learns his Uncle Theo was exiled or estranged from the family because Nanning’s parents (and relatives) turned their backs and refused to help Theo’s Jewish fiancée escape a concentration camp, where she was subsequently murdered by the Nazis.  Nanning, of course, has little understanding of what any of this means, finding it hard to believe his parents would do something like that, facing difficult moral dilemmas without providing simple solutions, as the film centers on the child’s slowly realized recognition of his parents’ sin.

From the maker of HEAD-ON (2004), The Edge of Heaven (Auf Der Anderen Seite) (2007), and 2017 Top Ten List #9 In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts), which Bohm co-wrote, Akin’s films tend to be ambitious, raw, and emotionally explosive, where anger, pain, and rebellion simmer, exploring subjects like ethnic identity, immigration, and cultural conflict, yet this is a very different film, on a much smaller scale, calmer, unusually measured, more intimately spare and introspectively subdued, told through the warmth of a child’s eyes, where the massive sky and setting sun merge above the restless sea, with wind in the dunes and water everywhere, featuring plenty of scenes of animals in their natural environment, like beetles on blades of grass, waterfowl on the beach, honey bees, geese in flight, or desolate mudflat sequences that reveal what the tide has brought in, which feel more like poetic Terrence Malick touches. Cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub captures Amrum’s stark and unforgiving landscapes through expansive wide shots, often pulling back to reveal a vast, water-saturated terrain that feels suspended in time, with the island dotted with thatched cottages.  The film turns when Nanning innocently announces that he’s heard that the war may be over soon, where he’s excited about the prospects of seeing his father again, but his mother, a prisoner of her blind allegiance to Nazi ideology, sternly sets him straight, indicating this kind of talk only weakens the troop’s morale, as they are risking their lives every day fighting for the Fatherland, claiming whoever told him that deserves to be thoroughly punished.  Despite their hardships, Nanning’s life on the beautiful and windswept island is mostly idyllic, where his mother’s aggressive posture takes him by surprise, not really knowing what to make of it.  After hearing the actual news of Germany’s imminent defeat on the radio, followed shortly afterwards with Hitler’s demise, Hille takes a turn for the worse, falling into a deep depression, keeping to herself, refusing to eat, even after the birth of her child, realizing that the entire foundation of their beliefs, the very social structure that sustained them, is close to total collapse, emblematic of the collective trauma of the nation, wondering “What kind of world is this for a child to grow up in?”  All she talks about is wanting white bread with butter and honey, precious commodities that are nearly impossible to find, but that doesn’t stop Nanning from looking for them anyway, literally scouring the island, discovering it is filled with people responding to Germany’s impending defeat, with some relieved, some fearful, and some in denial.  In a succession of encounters that will highlight the fractures that tear this small society apart, caught up in the enclosed and restricted space, his entire family is viewed as strangers, treated with the prejudice and hostility normally reserved for foreigners, despite the fact they have owned a house on the island for countless generations, discovering how far removed their life is from the others who are not Nazi sympathizers and just want the war to be over, vehemently regarding his family as outsiders whose militaristic views are barely tolerated, as so many of their Amrumer neighbors have immigrant relatives fighting in the U.S. army.     

Akin presents a devastated and unstructured society comprised of convinced Nazis who cling to lies to the very end, war refugees forced to leave everything behind, people thirsting for personal revenge against the Nazi regime, and those who simply wished to be left alone, while addressing the issue of German collective guilt, the legacy of National Socialism, and the question of how this burden would continue to affect later generations.  On some of his adventures across the island he is joined by Hermann, whose mother is demonstrably anti-Hitler, but his grandfather, Grandpa Arjan (Lars Jessen), teaches Nanning how to gut and skin a rabbit, while also discovering his grandfather’s hidden radio tuned to foreign enemy stations that play American jazz, like Fred Astaire’s Cheek to Cheek, Fred Astaire - Cheek To Cheek 1935 (Leo Reisman) (Irving ... YouTube (3:17), or later after the war is over we hear the celebratory sounds of Louis Armstrong’s Stardust, Louis Armstrong- Stardust YouTube (3:34).  He also drops in on an old whaler, Sam Gangsters (Detlev Buck), who teaches him the seal dance, laying on the beach on his stomach while kicking his rear legs, luring seals in from the ocean where Sam can shoot them.  Nanning’s journey is interrupted by a group of war refugees who take advantage of their strength in numbers, stealing what he was gathering for his mother, while beating him up in the process.  Wearing his Hitler Youth uniform, he makes a bike crossing through the mudflats during low tide to visit his Uncle Onno on a neighboring island, seeking sugar for his mother, but he has to recite a Nazi pledge before his uncle will part with it.  Easily the most harrowing experience is his return back home, as the tide has risen, making passage nearly impossible, where he has to wade through water above his shoulders, holding the sugar over his head while steering the bike underwater, until eventually it is too much, where he has to swim, losing his aunt’s bike in the process, returning the next day for butter, only to be confronted by one of the bullies on the journey home, sending them both back into the sea, where Nanning actually ends up saving the other kid from drowning, much to his sister’s gratitude, calmly leaving afterwards with the butter intact.  He has a dream afterwards of meeting his Uncle Theo on the beach, protesting his innocence by stating, “What my parents did isn't my fault.”  His uncle reminds him, “You are not to blame, but you are still involved.”  You can’t choose your parents, but therein lies an underlying theme, that you cannot escape your past and the questions it raises, as Nanning’s emerging moral conscience suddenly awakes to the moral collapse around him, expressing an enduring need for compassion.  In a monumental tribute, set to the dreamlike soundtrack of Hainbach’s Amrum (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) YouTube (7:12), an experimental electronic composer, there is a close up at the end of Hark Bohm with the sun shining on his face, the grownup version of Nanning looking out into the ocean at the setting sun, who lived to see the release of the film, where Akin pays him the ultimate memorial tribute by breathing life into his final screenplay.   

Fiume O Morte!

 

Gabriele D'Annunzio

D'Annunzio (in the middle with the stick) in Fiume, 1919

D'Annunzio (in the middle in uniform) with Italian publisher Arnoldo Mondadori

Director Igor Bezinović

Gabriele D’Annunzio, September 1919

Elon Musk Roman/fascist salute during Trump inauguration, January 2025

FIUME O MORTE!               B+                                                                                         Croatia  Italy  Slovenia  (112 mi)  2025  d: Igor Bezinović

Director Statement, Igor Bezinović

By making this film I wanted to get to know the past of my hometown Rijeka/Fiume, but also to get to understand its present state from a new perspective. During this process I’ve met hundreds of my fellow citizens who wanted to work on the film in front of the camera or behind it. I’ve met drivers, politicians, dustbin collectors, archivists, doormen, cooks, musicians, professors, translators and waiters who all had ideas about what this film should be like. I’ve also met historians of all kinds, from those who saw D’Annunzio as the crazier version of Mussolini to the ones who saw him as the Italian Che Guevara.

Besides meeting new people I’ve also read thousands and thousands of pages on D’Annunzio in Fiume, and while doing it I was not only gathering facts but was also shaping my own political ideas.

One idea, however, stayed clear to me all the way. That idea is formulated in a political pamphlet published in Fiume in 1922, soon after D’Annunzio’s departure: “Long live Fiume, free and independent from any kind of rescuers, liberators and protectors!”

I made a film with my fellow citizens and for my fellow citizens, building a chronological story that we’ll be able, I hope, to retell to new generations. I also hope that our film will help the audiences outside of Rijeka think about how much they know about the histories of their own hometowns and about how these histories got remembered and retold.

In his lesser-known essay from 1960, Pier Paolo Pasolini calls D’Annunzio’s occupation of Fiume a “pagliacciata narcisistica,” “a narcissistic farce.” D’Annunzio saw Fiume as a personal playground, as a place where he could experiment and practice everything that came to his mind.

By making this film I wanted to keep D’Annunzio’s idea of Rijeka/Fiume as a playground, but this time the citizens of Rijeka are the ones who are playing.

Far-right authoritarianism is on the rise around the world, threatening democracies everywhere, with its fascist clutches gripping even the United States, as this film conveys a timely warning against the rise of global far-right authoritarianism.  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the blueprint model for the American right wing, apparently enthralled by the ease in how he systematically dismantled the country’s legal system and changed the election system to ensure future election victories.  By rigging the elections and at the same time stripping the nation’s legal authority to challenge the results, Orbán was also withdrawing media licenses for independent journalists, with ownership of the media increasingly shifting to oligarchs allied with Prime Minister Orbán’s government, making state-owned broadcasters controlled by the ruling party.  If this doesn’t sound like what’s happening in America right now, then you haven’t been paying attention.  But it’s not just happening here, as there are examples throughout history, with this Croatian filmmaker taking a look back at his own country’s turbulent history one hundred years ago, where he decides to recreate a little-known moment in history, while having a little fun in the process, creating a visionary, boldly inventive work of art that is original and genuinely eye opening, while at the same time informative.  Coming from the last generation of Tito’s pioneers, Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia, Igor Bezinović is a filmmaker born in Rijeka, graduating in film directing at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb and in Philosophy, Sociology, and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb.  Nestled in an inlet of the Adriatic Sea, Rijeka/Fiume is now the third largest city in Croatia, but it has frequently changed hands throughout history, changing its country of origin at least nine different times in the 20th century alone, as just after WWI it belonged to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, before that partly the Kingdom of Italy and partly the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and before that the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, before that the Free State of Fiume, before that the Italian Regency of Carnaro, and before that the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

That’s a bit of a swallow, so to make things easier to comprehend, Bezinović asks citizens of his own city if they know who Gabriele D’Annunzio is, getting many different answers, but most do not, as he’s a forgotten footnote in history, which the filmmaker delightfully brings back to life with the participation of around 100 non‑professional actors and extras, not unlike what Robert Greene constructed with Bisbee '17 (2018), where it’s 30-minutes in before the title card appears, named after his political slogan.  What defines our identity?  What makes us who we are?  Combining archival footage of one of the most photographed events of the time, including video footage, interviews, and reenactments, Bezinović engages about three hundred locals to re-enact a rather surreal 16-month occupation in 1919 when D’Annunzio declared himself the de facto dictator of Fiume, the Italian name for the city, as the decadent Italian poet, playwright, orator, journalist, aristocrat, flamboyant public persona, and Royal Italian Army officer during World War I preached an ultra-right Italian nationalism after the war that was a predecessor to Benito Mussolini’s full-blown fascism.  Bezinović ironically remarks at the beginning of the film that the “film represents a mirror of today’s time,” while visually exploring buildings and streets that bore D’Annunzio’s name during the fascist period, noting “My Italian colleagues warned me not to mention fascism too much in the intro for the sake of Italian viewers, so I’ll stop here.”  But if truth be told, he doesn’t exactly heed their suggestion, as the film is praised in Croatia while attracting little attention in Italy, where D’Annunzio is still celebrated in Italy as a national hero, erecting a statue in Trieste about seventy kilometers away on the 100th anniversary of the occupation of Fiume, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni photographed in front of it, praising D’Annunzio as a man who ruled “with courage and audacity,” while in Croatia he is remembered as a megalomaniacal fascist occupier. 

Amusingly shot by Gregor Božič, there are seven different bald-headed actors drawn from the city streets who play D’Annunzio, with Bezinović announcing each change, while the narrators keep changing as well, each adding a different aspect.  The story of D’Annunzio’s occupation is narrated in the local Fiumano language, a variety of the Venetian dialect historically spoken by the Italian community of Fiume, yet as Bezinović notes in the first parts of the film, this is “no longer spoken or understood by most people in Rijeka,” yet the changing languages is a realistic aspect that reflects upon the city itself, part of the cosmopolitan, multi-cultural history of Rijeka and part of the linguistic tapestry in present-day Croatia, where that diversity is something D’Annunzio despised yet the film revels in, pretty much rubbing our noses in it.  Like Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude, it’s the irreverent absurdity that stands out, where modern-day re-enactments show how the events of the past are still a living reality, yet restaging history in this way also makes it easier to remember, as despite the dry facts on display, what stands out is the mocking tone of the filmmaker, who is not making fun of history, but how it can be remembered today, as the film is much more entertaining and fun than any description implies, where D’Annunzio is a model for contemporary right-wing populists across Europe and elsewhere.  Nearly ten years in the making, Bezinović draws from a treasure trove of 10,000 archival photographs while also using ordinary citizens from town to restage those same images, starting in the present, showing historical pictures of demolished bridges and buildings, and then showing those same sites in Rijeka today, a port city on Kvarner Bay in the northern Adriatic Sea, with plenty of cars and pedestrian traffic buzzing by.  Yet it’s the tongue-in-cheek narration that stands out, continually conveying a message where reviving interest in the city’s history is an essential message, as it makes us pause and take notice, reminding us this has happened before, so maybe we should pay attention to see how this plays out. 

Employing a hybrid, experimental format and satiric restaging technique used in Radu Jude’s I Don't Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari) (2018), this is a performative historiography that reconfigures memory through reenactment, documentary observation, archival reappropriation, and collective performances in which contemporary residents of Rijeka restage the historical events.  Focusing on the 1919–1921 occupation of the city of Rijeka/Fiume by the Italian writer and political rabble rouser Gabriele D’Annunzio, who ruled without being elected, the film critically examines the tactics of performance, manipulation, and propaganda employed during the siege, as D’Annunzio was one of the biggest masters of ghastly political showmanship of his time that would ultimately lead to Mussolini, using political theater as a staged reality where the power of pageantry is showcased through a masquerade of images, gestures, and myth as much as through force, exposing the constructed and contingent nature of historical narratives by fragmenting identity, transforming the city into a living memoryscape, FIUME O MORTE! Clip YouTube (1:29). Reflecting on the persistence of extremist ideologies in contemporary society, this is skillfully achieved through participatory performances involving those who live in the city today, as history and memory emerge, skillfully and cohesively edited together by Hrvoslava Brkusic.  At the same time, the film articulates a critical stance towards militarism, political spectacle, and nationalist imagery, positioning memory as a site of communal engagement and critical confrontation with both the past and the present, subversively diagnosing the legacy of fascism.  Winner of the 1st place Tiger Award and Fipresci Prize at the 2025 International Film Festival of Rotterdam, this is the most-watched film in the sixteen years of existence of Rijeka’s 300-seat arthouse Art-kino Theater, and the most-watched documentary in Croatia of all time.

The end of WWI transformed Rijeka/Fiume into a politically contested terrain, where at the time the Rječina River divided it from Sušak, an adjacent town with a predominantly Croatian population which has now been united into one larger city.  Entering the city in a caravan of trucks carrying guns, ammunition, supplies, and soldiers, the so-called legionnaires, D’Annunzio wanted to annex the city for Italy in defiance of his own government, dissatisfied with the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference which proposed handing over the city to the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), angered by what he considered to be the surrender of an Italian city.  Italy had not, however, made any demands on Rijeka/Fiume, but had instead forgone it in favor of Croatia, leading to a transitory period, the rule of D’Annunzio, where the Italian Regency of Carnaro was a self-proclaimed independent state, as they were successful in seizing control of the city and forced the withdrawal of the Allied occupying forces.  The Italian government opposed this and attempted to pressure D'Annunzio into withdrawing by initiating a blockade of Fiume.  When Italy sought a referendum in Fiume on D’Annunzio’s government, he first agreed but, realizing the vote was against him, sent in the troops to disrupt the vote and nullify the result.  Is anyone in America paying attention?   The song Giovinezza (Youth) is frequently performed, a piece sung by D’Annunzio’s legionnaires during the occupation and later adopted as the anthem of Mussolini’s Italian National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista), anthem of the PNF (1924 lyrics, two verses only) YouTube (2:29).  In what was a dry run for fascism, developing in the early stages, D’Annunzio was never formally a member of the fascist movement, though virtually the entire ritual of fascism was invented by him during his occupation of Fiume where he popularized the black shirts (the Arditi), the Roman/fascist salute, the cries of “Eia, eia, eia! Alala!” taken from Achilles’ cry in The Iliad, and the balcony speeches featuring flamboyant rhetoric engaging with a frenzied crowd, all of which later became symbolic pillars of fascism.  

Later ruling with similar charismatic flamboyance, Mussolini was impressed, adapting many of the same strategies, from D’Annunzio’s authoritarian interventions like censorship and violent repression, to the regulation of public life, including the prohibition of the Rijeka Carnival, strikes, and unauthorized public gatherings, while also having his hand in the promulgation of ambitious charters and the entire choreography of uniformed street parades and ceremonies.  Yet while amassing his authoritarian power, D’Annunzio also personally enjoyed cocaine and lavishly eccentric parties, which the Italians reduce to avant-gardism and an eccentric personality, always considering him a great poet, completely overlooking the violent impact of his fascist rule.  While he’s the star of the show, the protagonist in every sense of the word, and a worshipped celebrity, the film is really about the city of Rijeka, the city’s historically fluid and multi-layered identity, and how it survived this occupation, where over the end credits we see the cast celebrating the lively Carnival together after the shooting ends.  In embodying this more complex plurality, the filmmaker subverts the exclusive and homogenizing nationalist agenda advocated by D’Annunzio himself, who described the non-Italian residents of the city as “Slavic bastards” and “filthy Croats,” destroying their buildings in a hate-based agenda aimed at a radical Italianization of the city.  A true “essay film,” Bezinović foregrounds the instability and performative construction of historical identity, while at the same time reveals how interpretations that focus exclusively on the aesthetic or eccentric dimensions of D’Annunzio’s occupation ultimately lead only to confusion, obscuring its darker sides of violence, repression, the dangers of political idolatry, and especially its protofascist tendencies, foreshadowing the many other authoritarians who are yet to come, where we are reminded that billionaire Elon Musk performed the Roman/fascist salute at the second inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump.