Collective

Collective (Colectiv, 2019) is Alexander Nanau's documentary you can watch online on iFILM. It opens with a fire at a Bucharest nightclub, where dozens of young people died during a rock show. Then survivors with non-fatal burns start dying in hospital beds, one after another — and someone has to figure out why.

The people chasing that answer aren't detectives but sports reporters at the daily Gazeta Sporturilor, led by Cătălin Tolontan. What they dig up is hard to believe: hospital disinfectants diluted tenfold, bacteria killing the wounded, officials who knew for years and stayed quiet. When the health minister resigns, a young reformer named Vlad Voiculescu takes the job, and the camera follows him inside a ministry where every promise runs into a wall of complicity.

Nanau shot with no narration and no staging — he simply trailed his subjects with a camera for the better part of a year. The film became the first Romanian title ever picked for the Oscars in two categories at once, Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature. Cold, clear-eyed filmmaking about the price of a system's silence. Stream Collective (2019) online on iFILM.