Kollektiv: Korruption Tötet

Collective, the 2019 documentary film signed by Alexander Nanau addresses a serious topic. In the fire in the Bucharest nightclub 'Colectiv' which took place on October 30, 2015, 27 young people died. In the months that followed, another 37 of the wounded with severe burns died in hospitals in Romania and abroad. The deaths of many of them could have been avoided, as they were caused by the lack of capacity, hygiene and proper treatment conditions in hospitals, and by delays in transporting the wounded abroad. The scandal and the popular protests led to the fall of the ruling Social Democratic government and its replacement with a government made up mostly of technocrats, which led Romania for a year, until the parliamentary elections in December 2016. The filming team started from the press conferences after the fire and focused on two main issues: the investigation and the revelations of the journalists from 'Gazeta Sporturilor' led by Catalin Tolontan which brought to the public's attention serious details of incompetence and corruption in the hospitals system and with the providers of medical materials, and the work of the Minister of Health in the technocratic government and his team, who during their time in power tried to take a series of measures to eradicate corruption at all levels of the medical system. Politics being what it is, the 2016 elections brought the Social Democrats back to power.

The investigative reporting techniques are used professionally, the editing is alert and explains well the main moments of a tragedy that changed the Romanian political landscape for a while. The role of the combative media is excellently emphasized. I assume that for some of the foreign spectators some details will remain unclear. The fact that the investigation team belongs to a sports newspaper says something about the situation of the Romanian press. The technocratic minister of health in the film, Vlad Voiculescu, has since entered politics and is running today for the position of mayor of Bucharest. Reporters and politicians in the film are permanently watching television stations that not only inform but especially comment with visible political overtones. Can documentaries such as "collective" be an alternative to independent investigative journalism? Accompanying the teams of journalists and advisers to the ministers for 14 months, Alexander Nanau and his colleagues help us to get to know the main protagonists, journalists and politicians. In most cases, they manage to make the cameras unbiased and invisible. The voices of the victims are represented by the grieving parents and the young Tedy Ursuleanu, seriously injured in the fire, who will bear the sequels of her wounds for all her life.

I am not surprised by the international resonance of the film, because the problems of medical systems, including lack of equipment and capacity, as well as deeper such as corruption and political interests are increasingly evident in many countries, including the crisis caused by the COVID pandemic. 19. Starting from the Romanian realities, "collective" manages to tell a story with universal validity. The story being well told, the impact is remarkable.

I see people here commenting that the movie was lame...that it is propaganda...that somehow ,somebody, profits from the tragedy....just please tell me how in the world you can profit from a tragedy by actually showing to the people that the system is wrong..the system is rigged by corrupt politicians and that was the cost. Some people really lack common sense . As far for the film it is a masterpiece from my point of view. It shows you just how corrupt our romanian medical system is and how it kills it's patients from the beginning and how, yet again,a good part of the blame is on the damn politicians. It is also another reason why it is so important to go and to vote in the upcoming elections .

Excellent documentary. Unfortunately the medical system didn't change since then. God help us all...

This might appear to Western audiences as a great piece of investigative journalism, and it is, but for Romanians it is a terrible thing to see. It's not like we haven't all talked about the abysmal state of the medical system in the country, it's not like we don't know the level of corruption at every level, but to witness it unveiling before our eyes is extremely distressing and painful. What makes it worse is that it presents a young minister of Medicine as a political hero, when we know he actually succeeded nothing of what he set out to do and, off record, he was among the people accusing the whistleblower of being dishonest or mentally unstable.

And to top it all up, we know that from the time the investigation took place (2015) to the time the movie was released (2019) and to now (2021), nothing has changed in any meaningful way. The woman that blew the whistle on the terrible state of the Burn hospital in Bucharest still works there (no one else would hire her) and still has the same bosses, with a new improved manager who accuses her of doctoring the video of maggots crawling over a burn victim's wounds. None of the people responsible or even partially condemned have served any sentences (one was reelected as the mayor of a sector of the capital city Bucharest) as their cases are still stuck in the legal bureaucratic machine. And not much has changed in the expectations of regular people, either. They all know that in order to have any chance for a mediocre treatment they have to bribe the people involved and never expect any kindness or increase in quality other than maybe a prioritization of their case. The system is still there, unchanged, strangling us to death.

For me the documentary was doubly terrifying, once for being a Romanian that might some day be sent into the nightmarish "system" from which few survive unscathed (or alive) and once again for recognizing the failures of the system from the film in my own experience. And I am a corporate man, working for Western countries in large and well known organizations. The feeling that it's not just a budget thing, or a Romanian thing and that it is a global thing resulting from human nature itself it extremely depressing.

Is it a perfect film? No. Sometimes it shows the bias of the investigators, things like their political stance or comments about the face of some guy they investigate for fraud and corruption. But that makes it also feel more raw, more honest. The investigators are not paragons of virtue, they are people like you and me and they are trying their best to do their job. There is a lot lost in translation, too. The HBO English subtitles are sanitized and incomplete, failing to convey the frustration, anger and violence in the people involved. Ridiculously, there was no option for Romanian subtitles, which makes me wonder how exactly did they get the English ones. The pacing is also all over the place and one can understand how difficult it would have been for the film makers to edit material that was kind of one sided and it is pretty obvious that people behave slightly unnatural, knowing they are in front of cameras.

Bottom line: it is a raw painful experience to watch this film. There is no joy in it, no closure, just people trying to fight the system by revealing it to the world in all of its ugliness. And they lose. That's the ugly truth.

Greetings again from the darkness. You likely recall seeing the horrific video. It was 2015 when a fire swept through a Bucharest club where a band was performing live. Captured on a cell phone, the video shows the crowd desperately trying to escape through the main door. 27 people died that night and more than 100 others suffered injuries and burns. It was a terrible tragedy, and yet more tragedy unfolded over the next few weeks, and that's the beginning of the story told here by director Alexander Nanau.

As recovering patients filled the burn wards and Intensive Care Units at Romania's hospitals, something horrible began to happen. 37 more people died. These were not folks that were admitted with a life-threatening status, instead it was bacterial infections that were responsible. What is the one thing we take for granted at hospitals? Yes, cleanliness. As the media began to question this death spree, Romania's Health Minister, Nicolae Banicioiu, a Social Democrat, began boasting about the country's medical facilities. It's at this same time that Catalin Tolontan, the editor of "Sports Gazette", was investigating the cause of these deaths. What we witness is investigative journalism at its best ... in the midst of despicable actions by those people we should be able to trust.

Mr. Tolontan and his team slowly peel back the layers, and discover massive fraud and corruption. A whistleblower leads the reporters down a trail towards Hexi Pharma and its owner, Dan Condrea. Protests and social upheaval follow, as the current politicians continue to spew lies. When tests prove unsterile hospitals due to diluted disinfectants, and that patients were denied or delayed transfers to proper facilities in Vienna or Germany due to pride and greed, outrage ensues ... leading to the ouster of Banicioiu and others.

Former patients' rights activist Vlad Voiculescu is named temporary Health Minister, and he permits total transparency by allowing director Nanau unfettered access to meetings and phone calls. The camera follows as reforms are instituted and Tolontan's research continues. It's stated with deep regret that, "Our healthcare system is rotten", and "We doctors are no longer human life. We only care about money." As more corruption and deception is uncovered, it's clear this was all about money, rather than healthcare.

Nanau's film would be powerful and memorable and important if he had remained focused on the work by the new Health Minister and the journalists, but it's elevated to brilliance by his inclusion of pieces on burn victims, especially Tedy Ursuleanu. Her severe burns left her head scarred and took one of her hands, yet she refused to cower or hide ... choosing instead to be photographed for all to see. It's such an affecting segment, and one that our mind won't soon forget. This is the rare documentary that also works as a political thriller. Rather than talking heads and a stream of interviews, we are invited into the world of journalists and reformists looking to right the wrongs. It's tense and emotional, and the outrage felt at the end is quite unpleasant and will stick with you. Those behind the corruption are described as "a nest of unscrupulous mobsters", and we can't help but wonder what happened to medical ethics and human morals. We witness these stories as they unfold and there may not be a better tribute to the importance of investigative journalism.