Collective
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: November 20, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
95
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Original-CinLiam LaceyNov 24, 2020
Granted a rare degree of access to reporters, and later to the Minister of Health, Collective is a tribute to people who work together to uncover the truth, even if the immediate benefits are not obvious. Read full review
100
The PlaylistChris BarsantiNov 23, 2020
Clear-eyed and clinical without being detached from the human cost, this is a riveting drama of catastrophic amorality told with a cold fury. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangNov 20, 2020
The horrors of Collective are sickeningly specific; the implications, as suggested by its comprehensive indictment of a title, are universal. Read full review
100
CineVueChristopher MachellNov 20, 2020
Collective is a brilliant documentary in its own right, but in this time of pandemic, scandal and democratic upheaval it is also the year’s most important. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyNov 20, 2020
Alexander Nanau's Collective has a propulsive energy, relentlessly building in urgency and outrage. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawNov 19, 2020
The cynicism and indifference to suffering is truly horrible, and a kind of insidious evil rises from the screen like carbon monoxide, and also a terrible sadness. Read full review
100
IndieWireEric KohnNov 19, 2020
From its opening moments to the devastating finale, Collective plays like a gripping real-time thriller, merging the reportorial intensity of “Spotlight” with the paranoid uncertainty of “The Manchurian Candidate” as it explores the national fallout of a tragedy that won’t let up. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisNov 19, 2020
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. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiNov 19, 2020
What makes Nanau’s film utterly compelling is the unfettered access he had to both the Sports Gazette journalists and to Minister of Health Voiculescu. There are no interviews or talking heads here: Everything unfolds as it is happening. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonNov 18, 2020
A fascinating documentary that seems to unfold over real time. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshNov 18, 2020
Gripping, incisive and shockingly powerful, Collective is easily the documentary of the year. Read full review
100
VarietyJay WeissbergNov 3, 2020
This is truly a documentary for our times, deserving of widespread exposure. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayNov 18, 2020
It’s a taut, intense procedural, with a resonant story that simultaneously follows a journalistic investigation and an attempt to fix a fatally dysfunctional medical bureaucracy—all while criminal organizations, corrupt politicians, and rabble-rousing television hosts work in concert to stymie any real reform. Read full review
91
The Film StageVikram MurthiNov 3, 2020
Collective sports a procedural-like pace that keeps the information legible and the action linear. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekMar 24, 2021
One problem with social-issues documentaries is that you almost always know where they stand, and where they’re headed, from the start. But Collective is as tense and as taut as a great fictional drama. Read full review
90
Rolling StoneDavid FearDec 3, 2020
Watching Collective when it premiered on the fall festival circuit last year, it was easy to see that it should be considered a flat-out masterpiece regardless of timing. Yet to watch it, or rewatch it, now is to experience something even deeper. It’s a story of a nation’s inability to take care of its citizens that comes to us in the middle of a pandemic that’s crippling America’s economy and killing its citizens. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungNov 3, 2020
In Collective, Nanau's observational style of filmmaking reaches emotional depths. Read full review
88
The Associated PressJake CoyleNov 23, 2020
Collective is not a walk in the park. But it’s admirably awake to the cause-and-effect tragedies that can follow seemingly slight or obscure governmental decisions. Read full review
88
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 18, 2020
Directed by Alexander Nanau with an alert eye for character and detail, this alternately illuminating and infuriating portrait of everyday bureaucratic corruption becomes a much larger, and more disturbing, portrayal of structural incompetence, indifference and moral rot. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineDiego SemereneNov 16, 2020
The film reminds us that without investigative reporting there’s no democracy, and that traditional expectations around impartiality and objectivity may be untenable in the face of horror. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeNov 24, 2020
At a time when the press is routinely denigrated, an account of investigative journalism as a force for good makes for inspiring viewing. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyNov 3, 2020
In its narrative tautness, this documentary can hold its own alongside the best of Romania’s contemporary fiction. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzNov 17, 2020
Rarely, though, has cinema been so devoted to idealizing the importance of journalism than in Collective. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 30, 2020
There’s deja vu in watching Tolontan deal with Romanian TV, which eagerly follows his team’s reporting each night, but which cannot resist from shooting at the messenger when he appears on their talk shows, losing the thread and forgetting the real victims here. Read full review
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