DOP Tudor Platon makes his debut as film director

Director of photography Tudor Platon made his debut as film director with the documentary ”House of Dolls” at the Sarajevo International Film Festival. The production had its local premiere at the Transylvania International Film Festival. Tudor Platon is one of the most prolific DOPs in Romanian cinema. In 2016 he was nominated to the Gopo Awards’ Young Hope category, for the film ”All Rivers Flow into the Sea”, directed by Alexandru Badea. He was also nominated in 2022, in the Best Debut and Best Documentary categories, for  ”House of Dolls”, a film about friendship and hope. The film features actresses Viorica Crăciun, Ileana Crăciun, Elena Laslu, Ana-Maria Bondar and Aura Chindea. Tudor Platon is the film’s director, scriptwriter and DOP, whose editing is signed by Natalia Volohova Deliu. Carla Fotea, Ada Solomon, Tudor Platon and Alexandru Solomon are the film’s producers.

When he started filming his grandmother and her four friends, who were on a holiday on the Olt Valley, Tudor Platon did not think about making a film. He only wanted to spend time with his grandma, Cica and get to know her better. The five ladies, all aged over 70, were sure that the young man filming them would lose interest and go back home. Tudor Platon:”It’s true, I wasn’t interested in making a film but only in spending time with them, especially with my grandmother, Cica, whom I did not know so well back then. That week brought us closer together in a very intimate way. We have been sharing a lot of things ever since, something which would have been unthinkable before. Just like many other people, I was raised by my grandparents. It wasn’t grandma Cica who raised me, but my other grandma, who had died two years before I started shooting what would become ”House of Dolls”. So I needed to get closer to Cica, to fill the void inside me. I think she had the same need too, because she had also been rather shy in showing her feelings up to that point. So when she told me she was about to go on a trip with her friends, I said I would come along. This trip they are making is already tradition and they do it every year. It is a holiday during which they isolate themselves from the world, which I think helps them go back in time, to any previous moment of their lives. They feel very young and that is perhaps because they have been friends for 50 years. From what one of my grandmother’s friends, Elena, told me, after we got to know each other better, they through I would get bored and leave after two days. But their relationship with me, talking about this closed universe they build for themselves when they go on their yearly trip, became very strong due to the fact that they regarded me as a kid. In fact, this is how they called me, « kid ». Maybe they were right. Maybe I managed to capture this candor of theirs precisely because I was very young and because they allowed me to film them exactly as they were not thinking I would make a movie. That was not my plan at all at the moment, the only thing that I wanted being to have beautiful memories with my grandma.’’

The need to become a director came naturally, as Tudor Platon says : “I felt the need to be also a director but I had not made any clear plans yet. At the time, I only wanted to capture people on camera. I have always needed that, as I see myself as a storyteller. I like to capture some emotions on film, and this is what I do when I’m shooting somebody else’s movies. When I only world as a DOP, I focus on image, but when I also direct, I tell a story with all the tools I have.’’

Tudor Platon studied image at the National University of Theatre and Cinema in Bucharest. During university years, he worked as camera assistant and DOP on shorts such as ”In the House” (2014) and ”Pipe, sex and omelette” (2017), by Ana-Maria Comănescu, ”All rivers flow into the sea” (2016), by Alexandru Badea, „4:15 PM End of the world” (2016), by Gabi Virginia Șarga and Cătălin Rotaru, both presented in Cannes, and also ”Private party” (2016) and ”Black clothes” (2017), by Octav Chelaru. Tudor Platon was also the DOP of the film „Christmas present” (2018), by Bogdan Mureşanu, shortlisted for the Oscars in 2020. The most recent film he worked on as DOP is a documentary by Alexandru Solomon. As director, Tudor Platon is working on a new documentary about his family. (EE)