Collective

Carefully composed, thriller-like documentary about medical scandal and corruption in Romania. A courageous group of journalists refuses to give up, and an idealistic politician tries to tackle the problem at its root. Do they stand a chance when corruption rots the country from within?

In 2015, a fire in club Colectiv in Bucharest claims 27 lives. In the following months, 37 more die in hospitals as a result of inadequate facilities and bacterial infections. To find out what happened, a journalistic team led by Catalin Tolontan starts looking for answers. Were the hospitals not up to their task, despite the Minister of Health promising the victims would get ‘treatment like in Germany’? And how was it possible that so many people died from bacterial infections in hospitals?

As the team digs deeper – expertly using old-school journalistic methods – they find out that what first seemed like simple neglect, turns out the be a scandal of breathtaking proportions. A newly appointed Minister of Health vows to clean up the mess. But he too, has to deal with the widespread corruption that paralyses the country.