
The real heroes are the whistleblowers, the doctors and the victims and their families.”
Collective documentary driver#
“Our profession is risky, but it’s risky to be a taxi driver in New York City,” he says.


“He understood that the media needs advertising to get resources for this kind of investigation to take place,” says Tolontan.Īnd even though he may have taken on powerful forces while breaking the Colectiv story, Tolontan shrugs off any suggestion that he’s a hero. The final film serves as a testament of sorts to shoe-leather reporting, an ode to the Fourth Estate on par with “All the President’s Men” or “Spotlight.” When “Collective” premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, Tolontan was heartened when one audience member came up to him and promised to remove his ad blocker from his computer. Year after year, we do this work and we gain our readers trust, because they see that we get results.” “We are unbiased and balanced in our coverage. “I’ve been conducting investigations for 25 years on sports figures and footballers and politicians,” says Tolontan. These stories exposed corruption scandals that ultimately resulted in jail time. But the lines seem blurrier in Romania, where Tolontan has written deeply reported pieces on figures such as Gică Popescu, captain of the country’s national football team, as well as Monica Iacob Ridzi, the minister of youth and sports. Imagine, if you would, sports columnist Skip Bayless posting exclusives on the Trump-Ukraine scandal in addition to offering commentary on ESPN.
Collective documentary crack#
Perhaps the most stunning thing is that this huge national story wasn’t broken by a crack political reporter, but by one of the country’s leading sports journalists. Journalists and citizens have to be involved, and only then will the government have progress.” “For me ‘Collective’ is not about the health system and it’s not about corruption,” says Tolontan. As “Collective” documents, Tolontan and his team conducted their own tests and found a paper trail that proved medical supplier, Hexi Pharma, had falsified records and watered down disinfectants, a story that had profound political ramifications in Romania. Nearly 40 more people died from their burns because Romania’s hospitals were so poorly maintained, relying on diluted disinfectants that allowed patients to develop fatal bacterial infections. Although the Gazette is best known for its soccer coverage, the paper became one of the leading sources of news on the aftermath of a catastrophic 2015 fire at a club called Colectiv, which killed 27 people and injured an additional 180. He did most of the shooting himself, which allowed him to be a fly-on-the-wall as the Gazette, Tolontan’s paper, published one blockbuster story after another. But Nanau promised to stay out of the reporters’ way and also allowed them to screen the final cut before it debuted to ensure that no sources’ personal information or names were exposed.
