Winner of the DAFilms.com Distribution Award following its Docu Talents from the East pitch this week, Romanian Tudor Platon’s highly personal new doc will explore “the different shapes that love can take between parents and children, and children who become parents themselves.” Producer Carla Fotea (who is also a crucial onscreen presence in the film) pitched the project in Sarajevo.
The documentary is Platon’s second feature effort and follows his House of Dolls which premiered in Sarajevo FF Documentary Competition in 2020 before its selection for Transylvania IFF, Zagreb Dox, Astra IFF, and Biografilm FF.
“For that film, he went on a vacation with his grandmother and her best friends. He explored his own family [but] for this one, he goes even deeper,” producer Fotea (microfilm, Budapest) explained of the new doc.
“In 2018, Tudor’s mother announced to him that his father had left her. She wasn’t able to say [why] he had left her, only that he had left her, she continued. “And that’s when Tudor started filming, not thinking about making the film, not thinking that it would ever be shown to other people, but he used the camera as a sort of an emotional shield to protect himself from what was going on because it was [as] tough for him as it was for his parents. For the next four years, he filmed both his mother and his father sometimes together, and you could cut the tension with the knife, and sometimes separately in intimate conversations.”
But at the same time something else was happening, producer Fotea pointed out. Tudor was falling in love with her. “We decided to start a family and that’s when Tudor started noticing striking parallels between his parents and us. And he also started shooting us because of course we had a small baby (and everybody wants to film a small baby), but he also filmed the tough conversations. He filmed us after I was diagnosed with postnatal depression and it was super hard. We went through some hard work moments together. It was very, very difficult. But I believe in the end it helped us understand how much we are just like our parents and how difficult it actually is the keep of family together.”
In his notes for the film, director Tudor explains his rationale. “I’ve been taking pictures and filming ever since I was in high school. Back then, I didn’t know why I was doing it. Over time, I noticed I hide behind the camera, especially when I can’t cope with the surrounding reality,” he writes. “Throughout this process [on An Almost Perfect Family], I tried to be honest and stay true to my emotions. Not only am I revealing to an audience of strangers a very vulnerable image of my family, but I also bear the responsibility of this representation in front of our loved ones and those who are yet to be born in our family. This film is the embodiment of a long and intense journey, from the pain and sorrow of ending a marriage to the hope of starting a new one.”
The doc is budgeted at €146,000, with €50,000 left to be raised. All territories are available except Romania and Moldova for the film whose release is expected at the beginning of 2024. During CineLink Fotea is looking for a sales agent, a premiere festival and financial help to secure the music.
“It was the fact that we wanted to open a conversation,” she further explained of her painfully honest doc. “We wanted to go open a conversation about motherhood and the hardship of maternity, about how hard it is to break up after thirty years of being together, and how hard it is to start your own family thinking you can do better, but finding how you actually can’t.”
