Oscar-nominated documentary Collective is a newsroom thriller about corruption in the Romanian healthcare system

Collective — an observational documentary about corruption in the Romanian health system that plays out like a jaw-dropping newsroom thriller — opens and closes with a father weeping.

“A communication error killed my son,” says the middle-aged man, repeating the government’s crass bureaucratic explanation and trying to retain his composure.

He is speaking to a room of strangers: the friends and family left clueless to what went so horribly wrong, after 37 burn victims died in hospital in the four months that followed the 2015 fire at the Colectiv nightclub in Bucharest.

Rather than milking the shot of the father for the easy emotional pay-off, director-cinematographer-editor Alexander Nanau cuts away, using distance to bear witness…