The corruption and incompetence within the Romanian health service is exposed by a small team of investigative journalists, headed by Catalin Tolontan, of the Gazeta Sporturilor. A fire at the Collective club in Bucharest left 27 dead – but a further 37 died over the coming weeks in hospital: many of the deaths were preventable.
Director Alexander Nanau (Toto & His Sisters, The World According to Ion B) succeeds in creating a seeming real time expose of events, a fly-on-the-wall involvement in the offices of Gazeta Sporturilor and Vlad Voiculescu, the newly appointed Minister of Health. We witness the receipt of whistleblower phone calls as they happen and the minister’s astonishment as more and more is uncovered – mob appointments of hospital management, bribery, dilution of medicines. It’s a tautly told procedural investigation.
Nominated for 2 Oscars in 2021 – best documentary and foreign language film.
Rating: 71%
An Opinion or Two 