We’re the Director and Protagonist of the Documentary Collective, Which Uncovered Fraud and Criminality in the Romanian Healthcare System. Ask Us Anything!

how/have anti-corruption measures in Romania worked in general since the proposed amnesty?

how/have anti-corruption measures in Romania worked in general since the proposed amnesty?

Catalin Tolontan: I stole the start with the dialogue :-) The changes in the judiciary that eased the fate of those convicted of corruption did not take place due to citizen protests. This does not mean that we have in Romania an optimal justice, but rather a "precursor of justice", as they say in physics to the elements that go through a stage of formation.📷

so.... business as usual, then? :p

Catalin Tolontan: Not necessarily. As President Obama said to his daughters, explaining Donald Trump's victory: society is not mathematics, it is evolving in a zigzag.📷

They haven't and they won't work since the laws are only applied to regular people. It's an endless parade of corrupt politicians judges prosecutors mayors policeman etc. This is the country where the prime minister was proud of 10 km of highway and cut the ribbon for it. It broke in 1year. Also it cost more per km than anywhere in Europe.

Yes, you are right. But Romania is also the country that in the last 13 years, since joining the EU, has progressed enormously. Of course we do not perceive all these changes. In 2007, Romania had a GDP per capita of 15,000 USD, today it is 30,000 USD.

But this is only on paper. It's the same with the GDP in the USA, people get more money, but the currency is less and less valuable. Romania progressed a lot on paper, not so much in real life. This might be the reason why the change is hard to be perceived. There is a difference between money and wealth.

The progress small as it is, is thanks to the private sector not the government.

Not only GDP has increased, but also the average salary in Romania has increased by 250% in the last 13 years. Of course, you are right, the life of a democracy is not only measured in revenue. But some institutions have also become professional. Romania is an evolving country. Hard, but you can't recover democratic losses over so many decades in a few years.

This.

Documentary on corruption in Romania is like making a documentary that water is wet , sadly

Catalin Tolontan: Your reservation is justified. But, as italian media wrote: ”Nanau filmed Romania, but framed the world”. Or, in Manohla Dargis (NYT) terms:
”Some documentaries reassure you that the world is better when they’re over (inequity has been exposed); others insist it could be better (call the number in the credits to see how). “Collective” offers no such palliatives. Instead, it sketches out an honest, affecting, somewhat old-fashioned utopian example of what it takes to make the world better, or at least a little less awful. The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice. But as “Collective” lays out with anguished detail and a profound, moving sense of decency, it takes stubborn, angry people — journalists, politicians, artists, activists — to hammer at that arc until it starts bending, maybe, in the right direction”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/movies/collective-documentary-review.html

As an editor who got a screener, I was able watch the movie a while ago. It's fantastic. Amazing piece of investigative journalism and well-crafted documentary. Congrats to the filmmakers, specially to the editors!

Why do you think it took a sports newspaper to pursue the story? Where was the rest of the media?

Catalin Tolontan: There is a very interesting scene in Spotlight movie, in which the lawyer talks to the reporter. And the lawyer says: sometimes it takes an outsider to face a system. Not that we compare ourselves to the team of Spotlight journalists. But the mechanism is the same. Sometimes it is easier to be curious, lack of obligations to a new field. And there's another advantage. We were able to tell the rulers: "We don't know the complexity of health policy, please explain to us ELI5. Which simply blocks them. Because when those who govern are brought to the constitutional basis of the relationship with the citizens, any untruth it's harder to sustain. 📷

AN: That had to do with the track record of investigative journalism that Catalin Tolontan and Mirela Neag have done since 25 years. There were already known as dogged investigative journalists that have brought down sports ministers that had to go to jail or the big soccer bosses in the country. After the Collective fire whistleblowers from the health care system turned to them. The rest of the press as the rest of the country were in shock and believed the lies of the authorities. It changed afterwards as you can also see in the film where several journalists have tough questions for the authorities or another investigative journalists comes into the newsroom to support the investigation on the off shore company of HexiPharma.

AN: Thank you for your wishes. It was a teams effort and I think the most important element was the courage of the characters to trust us in shadowing their lives for such a long time and in such vulnerable and crucial moments!

How do you see the genre of film as playing a role in the current conversation around corruption in Romania?

Alexander Nanau: Also cinema offers the viewer the possibility to identify with the real life characters in a much deeper way and that makes room for understanding the life attitudes of others

We realised that seeing a story like that in a film gives people a better overview over things that they have followed over a long period of time in real life.

Even journalists that have seen the film said that they did not get the full picture before seeing the film. After the release of the film in Romania the number of whistleblowers for example went up.

Catalin Tolontan: The new wave of Romanian cinema has been producing films about corruption for over 15 years. From Cristi Puiu to Cristian Mungiu they were masters in illustrating corruption in society. Alexander Nanau's documentary, Collective, added something, IMO: it brought the young audience, who want to get involved.📷

Fantastic job with the film! I was riveted the whole time. I have two questions.

You said that you didn't know that this would turn out the way that it did, and just started filming. How do you decide in general what subjects you want to film if you don't know how they'll turn out. Do you have multiple projects and just see which ends up taking you somewhere interesting?

Also, what was the thought process of switching gears halfway through to follow the health minister?

AN: Thank you! Normally I decide upon a theme which I want to understand better and I feel has cinematic potential after which I keep looking for people that I get interested in and start following them. After a while I start to understand the potential of a unfolding story even if I have no clue where it will go. So I invest several months before deciding finally. There were also project where after a while I understood that the people I follow will not really open up even if they let themselves be filmed and I stoped the project. From the moment I decide which project to pursue, it is always the one project in which I invest the time.

Catalin Tolontan: The question is for Alexander, as a director, he will answer. What we can say as journalists is that you never know when a small news item became a big investigation. Lack of certainty is, in fact, encouraging an honest treatment of the subject in our profession. We never know where we're going, and that's what I told Alexander on the phone when we agreed to be filmed: "We might have a good subject, but we might not go anywhere. We'll see." It took four months to verify the information before publishing it.📷

AN: When I heard that someone from outside the system and political scale is interviewed for the job as minister of health I wanted to take the chance and see if I can gain access into the system and tell the story from the inside of power. I was aware that it might become complicated in the storytelling but felt that if I felt so strong about it in the natural flow of things in real life it should be possible to keep the viewers attention in the film even if switching character in the middle of the film.

How did the Romanian government react to you discovering this? Did they try to “silence” you by any means?

Catalin Tolontan: Certainly the Government did not start an AMA session on Reddit :-) They tried to cover everything up. But the fact that there were brave people (not us, as journalists, we just did our job), but the sources, the whistleblowers made the information come out.📷

AN: The Romanian government did not react to it. Once it was nominated by an independent commission of film critics as Romania's Oscar entry they first tried to see if they can reverse the decision after which they tried to cut the normal funding that any of the countries proposals had during the last years.

Interesting!

Catalin Tolontan: If I may. My answer was about how the government reacted to our investigations from 2015-2016, Alexander's about how the Romanian political class reacted to the appearance of the film Collective in 2019-2020.

Sincer sa fiu, o parte din mine preferă sa uite de tot ce se întâmplă in România, de la o zi la alta. Deși m-am intors aici, simt ca nu fac față cu realitatea cotidiană.

În vizunea voastră, e o atitudine condamnabilă?

Catalin Tolontan: Plecarea sau raminerea in tara e o alegere individuala si nu cred ca poate fi judecata de ceilalti. Dar stiti cum se spune: poti scoate romanii din Romania, nu poti scoate Romania din romani :-) Oricum, plecarea a milioane si milioane de oameni, de vointe, ruptura din atitea familii e o mare durere. Da, suntem o lume globala, insa aici vorbim despre un ritm de depopulare a tarii pur si simplu. Se pleaca din lipsa de speranta. Dar sa nu renuntam sa credem. Si, oricum, faptul ca ati intrat sa discutam arata ca sunt lucruri care ne leaga si ne vor lega mereu.

Alexander Nanau: Happy to answer questions

Catalin Tolontan: I will ask you something that I did not ask you in over a year how long you, as Collective director, stayed and filmed, day by day, in our newsroom. What is the main danger for the relationship between journalism and the public, in the world, in your opinion? What is the biggest mistake of us, the journalists?📷

AN: I think that the main danger is to start delivering for ones own bubble of readers. There is always the danger of loosing readership and I find it extremely difficult to cultivate and audience that accepts to be challenged and maybe hear sides and takes on things that they might not like at first.

AN: I can't think of a big mistake that journalists have generally and worldwide in common.

Catalin Tolontan: Yes, that's right, maybe "second thought" should become a rule in newsrooms again.📷

As I have watched the documentary I want to ask: how did the story unfold? How did you decide when and what to film? How did you know it will build to something? Did you have different ideas or expectations in the beginning about the outcome?

All due respects and appreciation for your work. 🙏🏻

AN: I wanted to find the best way of understanding in an observational documentary how abusive power acts in its relationship to citizens. While it was clear from the start that the fire victims and their families are the core it became clear that investigative journalism might be the right pov. Once the team at Gazetta Sporturilor started aobut a week after the fire to investigate the Health care system, its lies and manipulation we understood that we should approach them.

AN: we never knew if there would be a story. It is always a challenge in observational documentaries that you start from a given situation and characters and the rest if just life unfolding in front of the lens.

Thank you all for your great questions today! We really enjoyed talking to everyone.

To Mr Tolontan: how do you see the future of investigative journalism in Romania?

Catalin Tolontan: We took the praise from all over the world for our presence in the Collective documentary as another sign that people everywhere, from the United States to Romania, from UK to Italy and Mongolia, feel the need for journalism. IMO: investigative journalism cannot exist as a luxury product, a showcase. Investigative journalism draws his strength from news journalism and here seems to me the real stake. How communities preserve information, how the press manages to preserve what has functioned for centuries in its heritage.📷

Hi guys! I watched your documentary recently and was deeply moved by it. I was disturbed by the footage from inside the nightclub on the night of the fire, but it gave the film a sense of urgency, I think. Did you have any qualms about including that footage?

AN: Hi. Yes we had a lot of discussion about it and tried to find answer to why or not to include it. As you say we have also come to the conclusion that it is important for a viewer to feel the urgency and most of all to understand that anyones life can change in seconds. It happens fast and without much of a warning (see the pandemic) that anyones survival can become dependent on the proper functioning of the societies around us. I think that the urgency that we feel when we see that fire is also an expression and understanding of the fact that we are all in this together at any time.

With neo-liberal policies increasingly dominating societies across the globe, what can people outside of Romania learn from the investigation you have documented in this film? In other words, the larger issues documented in your film are not necessarily specific to Romania, so what can a situation like what happened in the aftermath of the Colectiv fire teach others about holding institutions and people in power accountable?

Catalin Tolontan: You're right. Alexander managed to reach a universal nerve. As The Guardian wrote: Collective is "also a warning to us here about how mouth-wateringly lucrative a state health system is to a certain kind of well-connected entrepreneur whose impulse is to save money and make a profit."📷
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/19/collective-review-alexander-nanau-catalin-tolontan

here in Canada it is a running battle against conservative politicians who purposefully defund government services to break them, 'proving' that private sector needs to run them for profit, raffle those contracts off to their cronies, squeeze the public for profit, and then retire from politics to sit on boards of those companies they helped create.

Many people don't even consider that as corruption, merely good business.

Catalin Tolontan: Yes, we understand and thank you for the conversation and questions. We have special memories of Canada. At TIFF, in Toronto, at the end of watching the Collective film, a young Canadian came and said: "Today I take my adblocker off my laptop because I understand that journalism is essential to keep the rulers accountable". To understand how important it is for us. Honestly, we in Eastern Europe grew up with a complex of the West, of the free world. And when someone in this world recognizes your work and said that he will do something for the Canadian press because he saw something in the movie about the Romanian press, it was wow.📷

Will you ever consider making Collective for different countries (like a docuseries) like Canada, US, India and Germany etc ? Also since I found about Collective right now, I'd have to buy it.

AN: We don't plan to do that but I hope filmmakers and also journalists and whistleblowers get inspired in more countries to unite their forces.

I haven’t seen the film (though I now can’t wait to do so) so I have another question which I’m not sure if you can answer. From what I’ve heard of Romania, people have to bribe doctors so they’ll treat their family well. Which I find absolutely appalling. Doctors should treat everyone to the best of their abilities because it’s the right thing to do. You would never bribe doctors in some other countries. Do you see a way for this to change in Romania?

Catalin Tolontan: Your information is correct. Bribery culture is wider in Romania. It has historical origins and was maintained in communism. And it's not just about doctors. In recent years, however, and the tragedy at Colectiv has been almost a point of no return, the number of cases in which bribes are given or taken in hospitals and administration has decreased. Among other things, because the revenues of public hospitals staff (over 200,000 people) have increased: they have tripled money in the last 5 years. Today, in Romania, a doctor can earn 3,500-5,000 euros net per month only from the public hospital, but some of them also work in private hospitals. It's not a huge income, but it's decent for the poorest second country in the European Union.📷

Thank you for your reply. I hope things keep improving for the country!

Catalin Tolontan: And we thank you. It is up to us to improve our societies. Our job, as journalists, is to bring you the facts.📷
📷

As someone moving to Romania from the US, what do you think of the American system and where is a place that can be looked to as an ideal regarding healthcare?

I’ve heard about bribery and different levels of care in Romania, but it still sounded like there was treatment for anyone vs in the US where maybe ability to sell your home (if you can even own one, due to liens and such) or being sent home “stable” with a broken neck happens (to my mother when my abusive father to.d doctors we had no insurance since my mother only kept paying in secret.) the care varies.

I’ve yet to experience for myself the difference, and I’ve been obviously lead to believe anyplace in the EU does better than the states.

Catalin Tolontan: In many ways, the European Union has succeeded (in Western countries) in building a high-performance health care system for generations. Comparisons will always be risky and imperfect. I want to be honest: I don't have the data to compare the American health system with the European one. But we all have data to note that health systems around the world have come at a high cost to state budgets, that is, to citizens. High costs are not only generated logically, through high performance, but also by other worrying elements: busy schemes, managerial weaknesses, corruption or lack of vision.

Can you come to america to teach our journalists how to do journalism?

Catalin Tolontan: It's funny that we are told the same in Romania, to let others do the job. As if the best journalists are the ones you don't have :-) Now seriously, we keep our sense of proportion. You have thousands of brave and dedicated women and men in the USA who do their job admirably as journalists. The press in the consolidated democracies is better than the one in Romania, but we are learning. The important thing is that Colectiv refreshes with our modest forces, but on a global scale, and this is the merit of the director and his team, the feeling of the need for citizen involvement and trust in the good faith of the press.

Amazing documentary!!!! Have you heard from any of the families who lost someone in the hospital system because of negligence ; thanking you for your perseverance?

Catalin Tolontan: Thanks! It is our duty to thank the families of the victims. And we always do. Because it does not compare the suffering of the dozens of parents who lost their children because they were lied to by the government with our normal work. The Hogea family, for example, which appears in the film, has an impressive strength. They received us as journalists at home and in their emotions and that mattered a lot so that others could understand the price of distorted information. Alexandru, their son, died at the age of 19, without such extensive burns, due to nosocomial infections and the fact that he was not transported in time, the hospital management said that "we have everything".Our article about Alexander's death, one of the first of the 200 we wrote in the year the Collective was filmed, began with Alexander's mother's statement:

"I used to call those meetings with the hospital management conferences. They looked like press conferences, only talking about the lives of our children. That's how they treated us, as we later saw them talking to you, the press. In fact, their only fear was the press. Now we wonder if we weren't wrong in believing them so much and keeping in mind what happened! ” Mihaela Hogea

Hi from Canada. Towards the end of the movie we see Vlad Voiculescu trying to change something in the system, but he has to leave his post after 6 months. Now he's back as Health Minister. Do you think he can make some real changes?

AN: It is early to say if he will be able to do that as he is back in office only since last Christmas. We have to see and it depends for sure to a big extend on if he will have the support of the governing parties. That said the Romanian healthcare system is very outdated and taken over by so much corruption that it won't be an easy job for sure and I think that it is something that will not be solved in one or two years. It will take maybe two generations to bring real change. As I understand so far he is working on starting the financing of new hospitals and growing the safety in the existent ones. The Romanian state has not build a new hospital in 30 years. The first new hospital build after the Colective fire was build by an NGO called Daruieste Viata (Bestow Life) with private donations to which also the band Metallica has contributed through their All Within My Hands Foundation with 250k Eur.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8527573/metallica-donate-romanian-pediatric-cancer-hospital

Did yu receive some support from politicians outside Romania ?

Catalin Tolontan: Support from politicians as journalists? God forbid :-)📷

AN: Many ambassadors to other countries in Romania have supported us. The ambassador of the Netherlands organised a screening at his residence for all other ambassadors after which many came to the first night as a sign of support. Also the fact that Barack Obama listed Collective as one of his favourite films of 2020 has generated an automatic support because all the Romanian press wrote about it. He was basically the first politician to highlight this film about institutional corruption.

https://twitter.com/barackobama/status/1339933912928235522?lang=en

AN: Also the prime minister of Luxembourg has assured us recently to have any needed support from his side. Luxembourg has played an important role in this production as Bernard Michaux from Samsa Films in Luxembourg is one of the producers of the film and the Luxembourg Film Fund has contributed to the financing of the film.

How dangerous is it for ordinary citizens to be a whistleblower against corruption? How much danger are journalists in?

I know that partly depends on who is involved in the corruption, but an approximation is fine.

Finally, is the fight being won in Romania, or is it more trench warfare?

Catalin Tolontan: It's an interesting topic. I wonder when we came as a society to consider public servants heroes just because they do their job. I am afraid that the society that considers its journalists heroes considers that information is a gift. And in fact, information is not a gift, it is a right. We are journalists in the European Union or in the USA, in other democratic countries, not in China, Russia or Myanmar. How can we be afraid to expose the facts? Yes for the whistleblowers is a real risk. For them it is a real risk, because if you are a doctor you do not have to talk to the public in the job description, through the press. Coming back to us journalists, I like what she said Allison Hantschel, a american journalist from Midwest says for a Nieman Lab story that it is time for reporters “to quit being thin-skinned babies on Twitter”.

I just want to quickly say thank you so much for your efforts in producing this film and exposing the level of rot within the Romanian healthcare system, and more broadly politics. For anyone reading this - watch this film! It is incredible.

My question to the makers ( spoilers ahead ) :

In your opinion, what do you think happened to the CEO of the pharma company? Accident, suicide or something nefarious?

Catalin Tolontan: As journalists, we cannot say anything other than we can prove. We studied the suicide file in the court archives and we have no reason to believe that it was anything else.

Also as filmmakers that have done a film in order to learn about how journalism works and how information of quality and the truth is obtained for citizens we can only support what Catalin is saying and that is that we all need to stick to the facts. And the facts for now are that the DNA of the CEO body matched with the DNA of his familyand there was no other evidence apart from him driving his car into a tree.

What's your favorite cheese?

Catalin Tolontan: Greek feta :-)

AN: Since you don't prefer good old Romanian cheese I suspect the populists are right and you are serving foreign interests :)

Make Romanian cheese great again!

cheesecake :)

Did you ever have the country’s media turn against you and write false headlines to the public, trying to make them believe that you had nothing?

Catalin Tolontan: Yes, but it's normal. On the one hand, we journalists must not consider ourselves outside the critique of public opinion or the media or those we write about. Sometimes, even from the most ill-intentioned attacks you can learn something.

What surprises you most about what you discovered?

Catalin Tolontan: The fact that often in a society, incompetence or lack of organization are as harmful as corruption. And I think that makes Collective valuable to any community. The documentary has had strong effects in Scandinavia, for example, where corruption is much lower, but people's concerns are comparable.📷

Hello, can you do America next?

Catalin Tolontan: We will tell you a little moment from Romania. On one stage, after Collective, someone asked Alexander Nanau when he will do episode 2. A young man from the audience answered: "Episode 2 depends on us". It was, practically, the recognition that, in a democracy, without the involvement of the citizens, nothing is possible.

Where to watch it ????

https://www.collectivemovie.com/watch-at-home/

How do you feel about your documentary being held up as evidenced that socialized healthcare won't work?

AN: I think that this a missinterpratation of what the film is showing and the term of socialized is I think differently understood in the US. The corruption and abuse of power that the film is showing in the public healthcare system does not mean that the system is wrongly designed but that people, individuals are corrupting it in an organised manner. It is something that is valid for any public sector within a society.

I think that the public healthcare system that we have in Europe is a great achievement of solidarity in our societies. We just have to take care that it does not get corrupted and robbed by greedy and irresponsible doctors, healthcare officials and politicians as in Romania and other countries. In countries like Germany, a country in which I have spent most of my life, it is working pretty well. Knowing as a citizen that whatever happens to your health and whatever your financial situation, you will be accepted in a hospital and will get the best treatment possible for free is something that responds to a basic human right. The right to health which is also written in our constitutions. For sure in order to have this every citizen is paying a monthly contribution, a certain small percentage of the salary to Healthcare. IMO it is preferable to largely private healthcare system that you might not be able to afford when in need or sometimes in a best case scenario you will survive after using Healthcare services but you will end bankrupted.

This is a simplification of it for sure and there are many layers of different kinds of insurances, public ones, private ones and there are also private Healthcare facilities in all European countries.

Can you do U.S. now?

AN: do you mean travelling to the U.S?

No. I meant uncover our fraud and crime :-)

Half joking. But kudos to you guys.

Catalin Tolontan: Thanks for the compliment. The truth is that I grew up with American, Italian or French newspapers. They are undeniably better than the Romanian ones. You have better journalists than we are. Maybe they need less hate speech from you, their audience sometimes.📷

[removed]

Catalin Tolontan: Frauds or crimes are not ethnic. The responsibilities are individual.

Steve... Jobs?

Steve...MacQueen?

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Catalin Tolontan: If I may, it is not empathetic to be interested in what is happening in other countries, it is simply effective. Because, as Thomas Friedman said, the world is flat. And the Covid pandemic is the best proof. The overestimated cost of health systems, poor organization everywhere, the refusal of some lead politicians to take note of science, the polarization between us, all these do not belong to a country, are features of today's world. Only by trying to understand can we arrive at answers to seemingly shocking questions: why does the USA, for example, have more deaths from Covid per million inhabitants ( 1,554) than a country like Romania ( 1,049), with a much weaker health care system?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

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Catalin Tolontan:
You says: ”The US healthcare system objectively sucks, but to my mind that's not why we did so terribly with handling covid; we did terribly because a solid third+ of the country, nearly half the voting electorate, didn't believe the virus was real, and trusted no one but the one man (the former president)”
We, as human beings, are tempted to see the problem in those who do not think like us. In the Covid issue, it is convenient to say that the problem is with those who do not follow the rules or do not want to be vaccinated. But a recent study published in Romania shows that the concerns of those who said they had reserves to be vaccinated are the same as those of people who say they will be vaccinated: vaccine safety, side effects ... This shows that the "others" are not aliens, they are our fellows and it is the responsibility of the authorities, but also of us, to try to have a dialogue.