collective, Alexander Nanau’s latest feature, documents the aftermath of the fire that took place at the Colectiv club on the 30th of October 2015, which led to the deaths of 64 people and a further 146 injured. Showing consideration towards the victims, the film takes the tragedy as its starting point but goes further down the path of the social and political effects that it catalyzed: the civil society’s reaction, the government’s resignation, the crisis of the diluted disinfectants produced by Hexi Pharma, the instatement of a technocratic government. The documentary shootings have covered little over a year, starting from the fire – approximately 14 months, according to the director’s statements.

Alexander Nanau prefers to work in the observational genre, using many hours of raw footage spanning long periods of time, which implies a great capacity for synthesis when it comes to editing. This is the way he worked for his previous film, Toto and His Sisters (2014), a touching documentary about three siblings that try to find some semblance of stability in the absence of any adults that could offer it to them. Both documentaries – Toto… and collective – are carefully structured around a clear narrative thread, in a form which is close to that of classical narration, through which memorable characters are constructed. The director achieves this by using the means of documentary film, extracting elements from the reality as seen by him, and it’s part of his technique to approach his subjects, to identify personalities and to represent them. Thus, collective gravitates around two central characters: journalist Cătălin Tolontan, the editor-in-chief of the Sports Gazette (Gazeta Sporturilor), who led the investigation that revealed the system through which Hexi Pharma’s diluted disinfectants were produced and distributed, and Vlad Voiculescu, the second Health Minister of the technocratic government led by Dacian Cioloș. Nanau regards both of them with respect, they’re positive models which he looks for in society – and, as Andrei Gorzo points out, he is set in motion by the need to find heroic figures in the anti-corruption battle. Their destinies (Tolontan and Voiculescu) are interlaced throughout this year, in collective, first of all because Tolontan’s team and their investigation leads to the resignation of Patriciu Achimaș-Cadariu, Voiculescu’s predecessor at the Ministry of Health, and second of all because their actions (at the time) had been put into motion by the tragedy on the 30th of October 2015. In the meantime, collective offers short incursions in the life of one of the fire’s surviving victims, Teddy Ursulean, a courageous young woman that shows an impressive capacity for resilience.

Even if this interwoven plot is supported by a narrative motivation, collective can be seen as having two distinctive (and concurrent) parts: the journalistic investigation that takes place in the newsroom of the Sports Gazette, and a second one, which notes the tribulations of Vlad Voiculescu at the Ministry of Health. The first part gradually reveals the work in the SPG board, following the efforts of Cătălin Tolontan (especially) and two of his colleagues, Mirela Neag and Răzvan Luțac, who are advancing step by step towards increasingly sensitive information, that engenders immediate political and social consequences. In their case, shooting some relatively static moments, such as their newsroom meetings, their encounters with sources (those that publicly owned up to their identities), and the reactions to the materials they published, serves directly towards documenting the journalistic process, relaying the tense context and the risks assumed by all those implicated. Additionally, it has the advantage of showing immediate effects, meaning that this alert rhythm of the film is also justified by the rapid pace at which the journalistic investigation is advancing.

When the film opens up a window towards the office of Vlad Voiculescu, his ministry meetings, press conferences or discussions with his team, they no longer have the force to sustain the rhythm that has already been set in the first half of the film. By comparison to the very active board of SPG, Vlad Voiculescu’s cabinet at the Ministry of Health only seems to get increasingly mired into the great unknown, one which he is incapable of elucidating up until the very end, however well-intentioned he might be. Voiculescu is also winning battles, but they’re somehow too small and lacking any sort of risks – after all, the position from which he is  “fighting” is one of power, and it’s his responsibility to know exactly how to use it, and in what quantity.

The juxtaposition of these two segments creates a certain number of cracks in this compact, Manichaean and very minutely-constructed narration of the documentary. Tolontan and Voiculescu are the good guys, those that are forcing a reform of a system that is outdated and corrupt, but from here on things start to be shaky, because the two of them are occupying incompatible positions. On the one hand, because one of them comes from the position of one that contests authority and the other one is the authority – as a matter of fact, the film even admits it, when it shows Voiculescu indulgently ridiculing a not-so-flattering article written by Tolontan, after his first ministerial press conference. However, this contradiction also results from the fact that Nanau is in a non-combative position towards Vlad Voiculescu, and such an acceptance of official authority is striking in contrast with the SPG’s attitude of contesting authority.  “The moment press starts being reverential towards the authorities, the authorities will treat people, citizens badly” is something that Tolontan says pretty early on in the film, and this is a question raised by others as well in regards to the film (Andrei Gorzo in his review, Filip Standavid in an interview with Cătălin Tolontan, for Scena9).

The crux of Tolontan’s investigation seems to be the attack upon a system that is a tad more complex than what Voiculescu seems to think is just the Social-Democratic Party, PSD (as we see towards the end of the film, when he finds out that PSD has won the 2016 parliamentary elections in a landslide). It’s a problem that the documentary ends on this fatalistic note set by the young minister, even more so when it seems that it’s taking on this call for civic action, for an increased voter engagement. Agitation or propaganda doesn’t quite work out with declarations about the loss of hope (and, respectively, loss of trust in Romanian voters). Then again, it’s strange that an observational documentary, which is traditionally a genre renowned for the fact that it entails a more democratic approach towards the audience’s options of interpretation, should reduce the context and close up the space for reflection in such a categorical way.

collective is available on HBO GO.

Andra Petrescu

Andra Petrescu is currently enrolled as a PhD student at UNATC, with a thesis on the Romanian documentary produced at Sahia Film Studio during 1950-1970. She co-edited the anthology “The Reality of Fiction, the Fiction of the Real” together with Irina Trocan (Bucharest: Hecate, 2018), and contributed to “The Film of Transition” (Tact, 2017, ed. by Andrei Gorzo and Gabriela Filippi) and „Romanian Cinema Inside Out” (RCI, 2019, ed. by Irina Trocan). She collaborated with several publications (AaRC.ro, Film, Observator Cultural, Films in Frames, Acoperisuldesticla.ro, Film Menu)