Collective (2019 film, properly released to international audiences in late 2020)

The first Romanian film to be up for an Academy Award (it’s up for two, actually) ranks among the greatest documentaries of all time. There’s something to be said about picking the right subject, and no doubt “Collective” would have earned substantial buzz if all it did was dispassionately cover this story, but Alexander Nanau shoots and edits this like he wants to pre-empt any ideas of all of this being reworked into a “Spotlight” sort of star-studded drama. The result is a work altogether wrenching, maddening, thrilling, and, eventually, hopeful. It might be impossible to oversell this film’s merits.

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