The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Barry Hertz
Rarely, though, has cinema been so devoted to idealizing the importance of journalism than in Collective.
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Romania · 2020
1h 49m
Director Alexander Nanau
Starring Catalin Tolontan, Mirela Neag, Razvan Lutac, Tedy Ursuleanu
Genre Documentary
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After a fire at the Romanian club Colectiv killed 27 people and injured 180, 37 more victims died due to improper health care at public hospitals. This documentary portrays the team of journalists investigating the mismanagement in the Romanian healthcare system that led to these deaths, uncovering a vast web of political corruption, fraud, and criminal pharma companies.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Barry Hertz
Rarely, though, has cinema been so devoted to idealizing the importance of journalism than in Collective.
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
In Collective, Nanau's observational style of filmmaking reaches emotional depths.
Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene
The film reminds us that without investigative reporting there’s no democracy, and that traditional expectations around impartiality and objectivity may be untenable in the face of horror.
San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson
A fascinating documentary that seems to unfold over real time.
This is truly a documentary for our times, deserving of widespread exposure.
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
In its narrative tautness, this documentary can hold its own alongside the best of Romania’s contemporary fiction.
Chicago Tribune by Katie Walsh
Gripping, incisive and shockingly powerful, Collective is easily the documentary of the year.
It’s a taut, intense procedural, with a resonant story that simultaneously follows a journalistic investigation and an attempt to fix a fatally dysfunctional medical bureaucracy—all while criminal organizations, corrupt politicians, and rabble-rousing television hosts work in concert to stymie any real reform.
There’s deja vu in watching Tolontan deal with Romanian TV, which eagerly follows his team’s reporting each night, but which cannot resist from shooting at the messenger when he appears on their talk shows, losing the thread and forgetting the real victims here.
The Film Stage by Vikram Murthi
Collective sports a procedural-like pace that keeps the information legible and the action linear.
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