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The parents of one of the victims of the nightclub fire featured in the Romanian documentary “Collective” have spoken of their hope that the film’s Oscar and BAFTA nominations will mean more people know about the scandal, its director Alexander Nanau tells Variety.
“They posted a message on Facebook to their son saying: ‘We failed to help you at that time, but we’re so glad that the whole world will see the story, and all we want is that other people understand how things work, and that they will not have to go through the same thing,” he says.
The film followed a team of investigative journalists as they tried to find out why so many people died in hospital following the fire, which led them to uncover widespread corruption within the healthcare system. When the Minister of Health resigned, Nanau’s team shadowed Vlad Voiculescu, an activist for patients’ rights,...
“They posted a message on Facebook to their son saying: ‘We failed to help you at that time, but we’re so glad that the whole world will see the story, and all we want is that other people understand how things work, and that they will not have to go through the same thing,” he says.
The film followed a team of investigative journalists as they tried to find out why so many people died in hospital following the fire, which led them to uncover widespread corruption within the healthcare system. When the Minister of Health resigned, Nanau’s team shadowed Vlad Voiculescu, an activist for patients’ rights,...
- 4/4/2021
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
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When documentary maker Alexander Nanau started filming a team of investigative journalists in the aftermath of a tragic fire, no one knew the staggering level of corruption they would uncover. The blaze at Bucharest’s Colectiv club in 2015 left 27 dead and 180 injured. When more burn victims began dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life-threatening, the Romanian newspaper Sports Gazette started probing into the health service.
In Collective, this year’s Oscar-shortlisted International Feature from Romania, Nanau’s camera follows the team closely as they chase leads and hear from whistleblowers with blood-chilling accusations, ranging from fatal negligence to organized bribery and record falsifying. It becomes clear that the victims were far from safe in the very hospitals that politicians had been boasting about. This is riveting, heartbreaking stuff, and the drama continues to unfold.
As the national media picks up on the story, Nanau films politicians blundering at press conferences,...
In Collective, this year’s Oscar-shortlisted International Feature from Romania, Nanau’s camera follows the team closely as they chase leads and hear from whistleblowers with blood-chilling accusations, ranging from fatal negligence to organized bribery and record falsifying. It becomes clear that the victims were far from safe in the very hospitals that politicians had been boasting about. This is riveting, heartbreaking stuff, and the drama continues to unfold.
As the national media picks up on the story, Nanau films politicians blundering at press conferences,...
- 2/17/2021
- by Anna Smith
- Deadline Film + TV
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When fire erupted at the Colectiv nightclub in Bucharest, Romania in 2015, the blaze killed 26 people on the spot. But the worst, in many respects, was yet to come.
One after another, survivors dispatched to hospital burn units began to succumb to infection, driving up the toll over a period of months to 38 more dead. Alexander Nanau’s documentary Collective, nominated this week for a Film Independent Spirit Award, reveals how investigative reporters helped expose the truth about why so many lives were lost in the fire’s aftermath.
“There was one whistleblower, a doctor that had the courage to open up to journalists about the real reasons for the death of the burn victims in Romanian hospitals,” Nanau explains. “From one thing to another, that led to a journalist being able to uncover massive corruption that led up to the highest levels of government.”
That one journalist, Cătălin Tolontan, worked...
One after another, survivors dispatched to hospital burn units began to succumb to infection, driving up the toll over a period of months to 38 more dead. Alexander Nanau’s documentary Collective, nominated this week for a Film Independent Spirit Award, reveals how investigative reporters helped expose the truth about why so many lives were lost in the fire’s aftermath.
“There was one whistleblower, a doctor that had the courage to open up to journalists about the real reasons for the death of the burn victims in Romanian hospitals,” Nanau explains. “From one thing to another, that led to a journalist being able to uncover massive corruption that led up to the highest levels of government.”
That one journalist, Cătălin Tolontan, worked...
- 1/28/2021
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
![Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in All the President's Men (1976)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOWI2YWQxM2MtY2U4Yi00YjgzLTgwNzktN2ExNTgzNTIzMmUzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTAwMzUyOTc@._V1_QL75_UX140_CR0,2,140,207_.jpg)
![Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in All the President's Men (1976)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOWI2YWQxM2MtY2U4Yi00YjgzLTgwNzktN2ExNTgzNTIzMmUzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTAwMzUyOTc@._V1_QL75_UX140_CR0,2,140,207_.jpg)
In the tradition of “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight,” “Collective” is a modern detective story about a team of journalists who uncover corruption within a power structure. Though made with the tension and precision of a feature, this Romanian film directed by Alexander Nanau is a documentary — the first, in fact, to be submitted by Romania for the Best International Film Oscar.
The movie begins with a tragic 2015 fire at a nightclub named Colectiv in Bucharest, Romania. From there, Nanau follows a small team of reporters from Gazeta Sporturilor, a daily sports paper of all things, who discover a web of systemic fraud that killed dozens of the fire’s survivors — with a curious echo of the classic 1949 film “The Third Man” starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles.
“It was a democracy that had been basically taken over by corrupted populist politicians,” Nanau told TheWrap from his home in Romania.
The movie begins with a tragic 2015 fire at a nightclub named Colectiv in Bucharest, Romania. From there, Nanau follows a small team of reporters from Gazeta Sporturilor, a daily sports paper of all things, who discover a web of systemic fraud that killed dozens of the fire’s survivors — with a curious echo of the classic 1949 film “The Third Man” starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles.
“It was a democracy that had been basically taken over by corrupted populist politicians,” Nanau told TheWrap from his home in Romania.
- 1/5/2021
- by Joe McGovern
- The Wrap
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It’s like a scene out of a nightmare: A singer is howling onstage as his band thrashes behind him. When the number is done, he notices something is on fire. That’s not part of the show, he says. The camera whips around, as if the person holding it is trying to see what the man is talking about. You can make out an odd, glowing light emanating from behind a pillar. Then, in a matter of seconds, the entire ceiling of the nightclub seems to go up in flames.
- 11/23/2020
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
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Romanian director Alexander Nanau’s bracing, relentless documentary tracks the aftermath of the 2015 fire that killed 64 people, hovering at the center of a system on the verge of collapse. And then it does, much like the flames that engulfed Bucharest’s Colectiv nightclub and sent the nation into a tailspin, as “Collective” sits at the center of the chaos with an unflinching gaze.
Nanau adopts a remarkable vérité approach to the material that, outside of some brief introductory credits, lets the footage speak for itself. From its opening moments to the devastating finale, “Collective” plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of “Spotlight” with the paranoid uncertainty of “The Manchurian Candidate” as it explores the national fallout of a tragedy that won’t let up.
“Collective” doesn’t dwell much on the terror of its inciting incident, dispensing of the nightclub event in amateur video from the...
Nanau adopts a remarkable vérité approach to the material that, outside of some brief introductory credits, lets the footage speak for itself. From its opening moments to the devastating finale, “Collective” plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of “Spotlight” with the paranoid uncertainty of “The Manchurian Candidate” as it explores the national fallout of a tragedy that won’t let up.
“Collective” doesn’t dwell much on the terror of its inciting incident, dispensing of the nightclub event in amateur video from the...
- 11/19/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
![Collective (2019)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNDc5MTA2ZjgtOWU4OC00YjU4LTk3ZGUtYmMwZjRhODJiYTdiXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTA2MDU0NjM5._V1_QL75_UY207_CR3,0,140,207_.jpg)
![Collective (2019)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNDc5MTA2ZjgtOWU4OC00YjU4LTk3ZGUtYmMwZjRhODJiYTdiXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTA2MDU0NjM5._V1_QL75_UY207_CR3,0,140,207_.jpg)
Alexander Nanau's Collective plays in London at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, running March 12 - 20, 2020.Most nonfiction films that aim to inspire change never find a way to edge past audience complicity and help us identify our own participation in regimes of oppression. Collective is a rare exception. Its beginning concerns one Romanian sports newspapers’ investigation into medical fraud after a national tragedy and offers a sly sleight-of-hand by highlighting one scandal, but not the one that eventually consumes the film. Title cards reveal quick background about the 2015 fire at Colectiv, a popular downtown music venue from which the film takes its name, which killed 26 concertgoers. Later, the death toll rose to 64 after hospitalized victims succumbed to infections. The fire inspired nationwide anti-corruption protests that led to the prime minister’s resignation. There’s a sense that reform is possible, and that grassroots anger can be productively channeled...
- 3/10/2020
- MUBI
Part journalism procedural and part depressing exposé, Alexander Nanau’s verité documentary Collective examines the institutional corruption at the heart of the Romanian health care sector. The existence of such organized malfeasance will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen any of the Romanian New Wave films that touch on the country’s nightmarish bureaucracy. But, really, any sentient human being living in the western world won’t be blindsided by the fact that for-profit industries cuts corners or that government officials outright lie to the press about various wrongdoings. Many Americans, currently living through an epistemological crisis of staggering proportions, are now slowly inured to such ugly realities.
With that said, even true cynics might still be disturbed by Collective. Nanau chronicles a scandal so devastating in its effects that it’s really only comparable to the horrifying incident that precipitated it. In 2015, a deadly fire broke...
With that said, even true cynics might still be disturbed by Collective. Nanau chronicles a scandal so devastating in its effects that it’s really only comparable to the horrifying incident that precipitated it. In 2015, a deadly fire broke...
- 1/28/2020
- by Vikram Murthi
- The Film Stage
![Alexander Nanau](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYmNmODNhZjItNjY0Ni00NTgwLTljOGItMDcxM2VkODNjYTY0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDkzNTM2ODg@._V1_QL75_UY207_CR3,0,140,207_.jpg)
![Alexander Nanau](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYmNmODNhZjItNjY0Ni00NTgwLTljOGItMDcxM2VkODNjYTY0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDkzNTM2ODg@._V1_QL75_UY207_CR3,0,140,207_.jpg)
Every now and then a documentary doesn’t just open your eyes but tears you apart by exposing a moral rift with resonance far beyond the film’s home country. “Collective,” Alexander Nanau’s explosive observational documentary about unfathomable corruption at the heart of the Romanian medical industry, is such a work. Taken on its own, this chilling exposé should send shockwaves through a system so mired in venality that politicians as well as a large segment of the medical profession thought nothing of letting people die so they could stay in power and ensure their kickbacks. But the corrosive corruption revealed has ramifications far greater than just in Romania, for . This is truly a documentary for our times, deserving of widespread exposure.
In 2015, a fire in the Bucharest club Colectiv immediately claimed 27 lives, but 37 more people died during the weeks that followed thanks to inadequate hospital facilities and rampant infections.
In 2015, a fire in the Bucharest club Colectiv immediately claimed 27 lives, but 37 more people died during the weeks that followed thanks to inadequate hospital facilities and rampant infections.
- 9/6/2019
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
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