The scandal uncovered by Tolontan and his team led to the resignation of one health minister and the appointment of another, an earnest-looking fellow named Vlad Voiculescu, who’s at first viewed by Tolontan-and probably by everybody else-with skepticism. Hospitals had been accepting bribes from the disinfectant’s manufacturer, and the government knew about the whole charade. The hospitals were further diluting the formula, rendering it almost useless and leading to fatal infections that never should have happened. A journalist for a weekly sports newspaper, Catalin Tolontan-perceptive, cranky, always eager to ask the tough question in a press conference-pulls one small thread and unravels a whole figurative sweater: It turns out that the hospitals treating the Colectiv victims were using a disinfectant that had been watered down, to dangerous levels, by its manufacturers. Rather, it’s set in motion by the hospital deaths of those who were being treated for their injuries after the incident. It begins with journalists investigating not the cause of the Colectiv blaze, or even the governmental negligence that allowed it to happen. But Collective is as tense and as taut as a great fictional drama. One problem with social-issues documentaries is that you almost always know where they stand, and where they’re headed, from the start. The audience for Collective is anyone who believes in holding governments accountable for their actions, and in seeking change when a system has failed them. And even though the events it addresses happened in Romania, they could take shape in almost any country in the world. Though it doesn’t wrap up with anything close to a happy ending, it’s more galvanizing than it is despairing. But Collective-which has been nominated for Oscars in two categories, Documentary Feature and International Feature-deserves our attention. It was one of the finest films released last year, and though it has been available to stream for several months (and becomes available to stream on Hulu on March 25), it’s easy to see how it could slip through the screening schedule of even the most astute home viewers: documentaries wrought from tragedies aren’t the sort of thing most of us seek out, especially during a stressful pandemic. ![]() A new, politically appointed government took office, with a term of one year-but that’s barely even the beginning of this story.Ĭollective is about survivors, about the purpose of journalism, and about what can happen when a bureaucrat pushes for change from within the system. Furious that any club would be allowed to operate without fire exits, Romanian citizens protested, forcing the country’s prime minister to resign. 30, 2015, this fire- in a Bucharest club called Colectiv-killed 27 people immediately, and injured another 180, 37 of whom would die later while hospitalized. and criminal malfeasance, Alexander Nanaus COLLECTIVE is a fast-paced, real-time detective story about truth, accountability. The horrific chaos captured on the video is mercifully brief, but Nanau has already given us some sense of the terror of the event: On Oct.
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