Directing: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A+

Collective is streaming currently on Hulu, and you need to watch it, like, right now. I have never seen any other documentary feature film more well crafted, or even legitimately dramatic, than this one—and that’s even with a focus on Bucharest journalists talking about their increasingly shocking discoveries about their nation’s corrupted health care system. My jaw kept dropping as I watched this movie, over and over, lower than the last time. It’s not just the examples themselves but the sheer scale of the corruption and lethal negligence in Romanian hospitals.

Most of us in the States don’t know a hell of a lot about Eastern European countries, although I’ve sure seen a lot of movies about them lately (the narrative film Quo Vadis, Aida?, about the Srebrenica Genocide in Bosnia; the other Romanian documentary Acasă, My Home, about a homeless family expelled from the Bucharest wildlife sanctuary they were living in). It’s easy to be ignorant and assume they are societies still lost in time from a bygone era, but the footage in Collective indicates the country has just as much capability for modernization as anywhere else. It’s the widespread corruption that sets it apart.

The title, Collective, is named after the 2015 tragedy in which a nightclub of that name caught fire, killing 62 and injuring 143 more. In the opening title cards of the film, we are informed the initial death toll was largely due to a lack of emergency exists because of no government oversight. Director Alexander Nanau appears to have gotten ahold of footage taken inside the venue during the fire. He only shows a few minutes of it: the metal band seeing that their pyrotechnics have ignited highly flammable materials above the stage, then noting to the crowd that the fire is not part of the show. Chaotic footage of screams and smoke and glimpses of fire. I keep wondering how much footage there must have been, all of which would have been seen by Nanau, and presumably others who worked on the film. This bit only lasts a couple of minutes and what little is shown will still haunt me for a long time to come.

And the thing is, that incident is just the beginning—the inciting incident that later brings light to shockingly horrible conditions at Romanian hospitals. Over a dozen of the fatalities from this event could have been prevented, but instead they died from bacterial infections at the hospitals they were sent to. The reporters of a publication called The Sports Gazette (Gazeta Sporturilor in Romanian) catch wind of this, and even though they are literally a sports publication, they start to investigate. And this stunning revelation is itself just the tip of the iceberg in this story: a company that supplies Romanian hospitals with disinfectant dilutes the product. The Sports Gazette soon runs the headline DISINFECTANT DILUTED TEN TIMES! As in, tests reveal the disinfectant is one tenth as concentrated as is labeled on the packaging. This leads to revelations of corruption and bribery at hospitals all over the country, at the expense of patients, to the degree that in at least one cast horrifying footage is leaked of maggots on the neck of one patient.

While Nanau keeps the focus on this ongoing scandal, there is at least one specific reference to how sad a state Romania is in broadly speaking: footage at one of many protests that break out features a crowd thanking these journalists for this work. “The best investigations are made by a sports daily,” shouts one man. “That is the state of our press!”

Well, these journalists would certainly appear to be heroes, and Collective is a testament to how vital journalism continues to be, around the world. Alexander Nanau has taken an incredible story, and told it with unparalelled precision. There’s a reason this is only the second documentary feature film to have been nominated for an Academy Award in both the Documentary Feature and International Feature categories (the previous one being the best film of 2019, Honeyland), both films working impressively on both a documentary and a straightforward narrative level. Collective also has the distinction of being both a double-nominee this year and the first Romanian film of any kind to be nominated for an Oscar.

I still say Time should win the Documentary award, as it is just as beautiful as it is gripping and heartbreaking—but, Collective comes damn close. Whether this or Quo Vadis, Aida? should win Best International Feature is a tough call—probably the latter, just because of the gravity of the subject matter. Neither film is “better,” though; they are both stunning achievements. Collective is unfortunately a minor victim of circumstance, in fields with incredibly strong competitors. It makes a huge difference that it got these nominations to begin with—indeed, they are the sole reason I even know about the film. And now you do too! Trust me, once you start it, you won’t be able to look away.

*New Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu attempts to make things better, a daunting task.*

Overall: A