Collective: Film Review

Director: Alexander Nanau

There's no getting away from the fact that Collective is a terrifying film.

From extremely graphic and upsetting footage inside the Colectiv nightclub fire in Bucharest on October 30, 2015 which killed many to an escalating feeling of dread as Nanau goes further down a rabbit hole, Collective is truly jaw-dropping.

Nanau's documentary starts with the details of the fire - 64 people died in it, and hundreds more were injured and taken to hospital. But months later, many of them were dead from extremely minor burns - something extraordinarily shocking, but something which is further exacerbated by journalists digging further into a story that has major country-wide ramifications.

Said journalists are members of a newspaper (of all things), led by Catalin Tolontan and as they look further into what's happening, the signs point to an endemic corruption at the heart of the government.

To say more about Collective is to reveal some of the more shocking moments that will truly leave your jaw squarely on the floor. This is a film that leaves you seething, angry and numbed by how far a collective can fail the individuals.

Nanau makes an excellent fist of the fly-on-the-wall nature of this documentary, capturing the journalists at work, monitoring the government and in a unique twist garnering a different perspective on events that devastates even further.

It may be that there's not a real sense of closure in Collective and it necessitates further reading, but that could largely be due to the absolute heart-wrenching feeling of being invested as each sickening revelation prompts further questions of how far the rot truly goes.

There may be a bit of a dip about an hour in in Collective, but a lack of talking heads and a precisely-helmed lens makes it a searing doco that simply follows a truly awful story - and tells it in a truly compelling way.

The truth has never been so frightening.