Collective documentary4/19/2023 But it wasn’t just disinfectant - whistleblowers later revealed to the paper how top-level officials had been using fraudulent medical purchases to line their pockets with taxpayers’ money for years, leaving their hospitals short. With Nanau a near-permanent fixture in Tolontan’s small meeting room (although Tolontan says that after a few months, the director seemed to “just magically disappear”), the reporters exposed how hospital disinfectant had been diluted to dangerous levels, how the disinfectant’s Romanian manufacturer, Hexi Pharma, had funneled money into offshore accounts and how this money was being used to bribe hospital managers into buying its ineffective products. As disclosed by Sports Gazette, most had succumbed to bacterial infections picked up later within the hospitals, which the government had proudly declared to be state-of-the-art (even refusing to send patients to more modern facilities in Austria to push this narrative).įrom there, the investigation snowballed, revealing a cancerous rot at the heart of Romania’s beleaguered health care system. While a fear of leaks kept Nanau in the dark until his camera started recording, the “something” that Tolontan had mentioned in that initial call would be the first in a series of staggering revelations: that the majority of Colectiv nightclub victims who died after the incident had not, in fact, died from causes connected to the fire. The exposé proved to be the final straw for a country that for decades had been undermined by cronyism and fraud, and major street protests forced the prime minister to resign within weeks.īut it was the continued deceit and cover-ups over the disaster - where the majority of victims actually died much later in local hospitals - that interested the director, particularly the dogged investigative work by Tolontan. Sixty-four people, mostly young Romanians, were killed and many more permanently injured in the tragedy, which was found to be the fault of lax inspections into fire exits and building materials, and brought to the surface deep-rooted bureaucratic corruption. 30, 2015, at the popular Bucharest nightclub Colectiv. Nanau originally had begun documenting the aftermath of a deadly fire on Oct. ![]() Despite the fact that neither director nor journalist had much of an idea of the structure or storyline at the start of filming - beyond an early pitch that Nanau says was to examine “an abuse of power” - what was captured eventually would form the feature documentary Collective, Romania’s official submission in the international Oscar category. 'The Rings of Power' Finale: Even Sauron Actor Didn't Know He Was Sauron at FirstĪs he soon found out, he had nothing to worry about - for most of the 14 months Nanau spent tracking Tolontan and his small team of investigative reporters, it was just the director, often with a small handheld camera in tow (although occasionally he would be joined by a sound man).
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