Film Forum

A disastrous fire at the underground Bucharest rock club, Colectiv, leaves 27 dead, 180 injured, and a nation traumatized. The 2015 fire is attributed to the pyrotechnics used by the band, the club’s flammable ceiling, and a lack of emergency exits – yet this is only the beginning of a twist-filled saga, as burn victims with non-life threatening wounds begin dying in droves. A tenacious sports investigative journalist – aided by whistleblowers within the government and a dauntless new health minister – finds the tentacles of corruption reaching from the bribes paid by the club owners to the entirety of the Romanian health care system. A timely exposé of how political malfeasance endangers us all. “A full-on masterpiece. A stunning nonfiction counterpart to every one of [Romania’s] New Wave narrative features about power, corruption and lies.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone.

ROMANIA / LUXEMBOURG     2019     109 MINS.     IN ROMANIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES MAGNOLIA PICTURES

Please note: Post-screening Q&A with director Alexander Nanau and film critic K. Austin Collins will start automatically after the film ends.

Virtual Cinema program supported by the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Reviews

“One of the greatest movies about journalism ever made.”
– IndieWire

“You won’t see a more relevant movie about modern-day America.”
– The Washington Post

“TRULY A DOCUMENTARY FOR OUR TIMES. 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 expose 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for it’s indicative of a worldwide phenomenon in which people feel so disconnected from others that empathy has been replaced by avarice, and strangers are viewed as abstractions… Few viewers will fail to make unnerving comparisons with their own countries while watching government officials blatantly lie to citizens and then get re-elected into office.”
– Jay Weissberg, Variety

“A FAST-PACED SHOCKER. A standout for many reasons. The director’s previous work has also revolved around social issues — Toto and His Sisters is about kids caught in the grip of a poverty-stricken slum in Bucharest, and The World According to Ion B depicts a homeless man whose collages bring him into the art world. But in Collective, Nanau's observational style of filmmaking reaches emotional depths. Tense and tightly edited, this exposé of heartless corruption will ring bells and outrage audiences…It’s also a rousing cheer to sound investigative journalism, in this case the Bucharest paper Sports Gazette and its editor-in-chief Catalin Tolontan.”
– Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter