November
28
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Collective (15)
Collective (15)
Director: Alexander Nanau
Runtime: 1h 49m
Cast: Razvan Lutac, Mirela Neag, Catalin Tolontan
Synopsis: In 2015, a fire at Bucharest’s Colectiv club leaves 27 dead and 180 injured. Soon, more burn victims begin dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life-threatening. Then a doctor blows the whistle to a team of investigative journalists. One revelation leads to another as the journalists start to uncover vast health care fraud. When a new health minister is appointed, he offers unprecedented access to his efforts to reform the corrupt system but also to the obstacles he faces. Following journalists, whistle-blowers, burn victims, and government officials, ‘Collective’ takes an uncompromising look at the impact of investigative journalism at its best.
URL: https://youtu.be/NCiK-Z4yiiU
Many will recall seeing the horrific video of the disaster in 2015 when a fire swept through a Bucharest club where a band was performing live. Captured on a cell phone, the video shows the crowd desperately trying to escape through the main door. 27 people died that night and more than 100 others suffered injuries and burns. It was a terrible tragedy, and yet more tragedy unfolded over the next few weeks, and that is the beginning of the story told here by German-Romanian filmmaker Alexander Nanau [The World According to Ion B (2010), Toto and His Sisters (2014)] in the excoriating documentary, Collective.
The film is the official submission of Romania for the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category of the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021.
In 2015, the devastating fire at Bucharest’s Colectiv club left 27 dead and 180 injured. Soon, more burn victims began dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life-threatening. When a doctor blew the whistle to a team of investigative journalists, one revelation led to another as the journalists started to uncover vast health care fraud. When a new health minister was appointed, he offered unprecedented access to his efforts to reform the corrupt system but also to the obstacles he faced. Following journalists, whistle-blowers, burn victims, and government officials, the film is an uncompromising look at the impact of investigative journalism at its best.
The Colectiv club fire was a terrible tragedy, and yet more tragedy unfolded over the next few weeks, and that is the beginning of the story told here by director Alexander Nanau.
As recovering patients filled the burn wards and Intensive Care Units at Romania’s hospitals, something horrible began to happen. 37 more people died. These were not people that were admitted with a life-threatening status; instead it was bacterial infections that were responsible, despite cleanliness being taken for granted at hospitals. As the media began to question this death spree, Romania’s Health Minister, Nicolae Banicioiu, a Social Democrat, began boasting about the country’s medical facilities.
The heroically rugged investigation led by Cătălin Tolontan, a reporter at a sports paper, Gazeta Sporturilor, uncovered stomach-churning secret film of a patient’s wound crawling with maggots. Suddenly the investigators start to receive sinister threats from the intelligence services.
Partly the film is about the grisly authoritarian habits that have survived the fall of Ceausescu in Romania, and partly it is about the big money to be made in exploiting national assets. It is also a sobering warning about how mouth-wateringly lucrative a state health system is to a certain kind of well-connected entrepreneur whose impulse is to save money and make a profit.
Streaming on digital platforms https://www.collectivefilm.co.uk/
Images courtesy of Dogwoof
