Collective

(Romania / 2019 / Dir by Alexander Nanau)

In 2015, a tragic fire at the Collectiv nightclub in Bucharest quickly took the lives of 27 concert goers and left 100 injured. As the shocked country grappled with the news, 37 of the injured continued to die in burn units that were unequipped to handle the number of victims. The disaster not only topples the government, but as investigative journalists look deeper, what they find reveals the real-life horrors of political corruption.

Filming for over a year, director Alexander Nanau's cameras were given liberal access to the offices and conference rooms of the interim government, in particular to the new acting health minister. As he assesses the scope of the damage done to the hospital system by the previous administration, he is also tightly embedded with a group of intrepid reporters and allows us to watch them in the moments they learn the explosive truth of why so many died. As he follows the families of those who lose their lives under hospital care, and the resilient survivors who use their bodies to raise awareness about what really happened, what emerges is an example of what societies anywhere can expect when they allow their most important institutions to be corrupted by self-dealing and greed.

Unrated / 1 hr 49 mins