Robert Richardson: White Devil

Documentary, biography | 105 minutes
Directed by: Jana Hojdová
Premiere screening

Robert Richardson: White Devil is an intimate portrait of one of the most significant cinematographers of contemporary American cinema. Over several decades, Richardson collaborated with directors such as Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino, and contributed to the visual style of films including Platoon, JFK, The Aviator, Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He won three Academy Awards for cinematography for JFK, The Aviator, and Hugo.

Yet the documentary goes beyond a career retrospective. It reveals Richardson as a distinctive, demanding, and uncompromising creator, while also showing him as a person whose character transcends professional success and public image. Through the trust between him and Jana Hojdová, the camera enters more intimate moments - away from film sets, premieres, and award ceremonies. Access to his private life and extensive personal archive reveals not only how Richardson thinks about image and his own work, but also his doubts, relationships, and experiences that typically remain hidden behind the reputation of one of his generation's most important cinematographers.

The story of the film's creation is equally remarkable. It began in 2016 when Jana Hojdová, a film student at Prague's FAMU, approached Richardson for her thesis project - and to her surprise, he responded personally. What started as an academic project gradually became a book and eventually a documentary, on which Hojdová worked for nearly a decade. A creative partnership and personal friendship developed between them: Hojdová traveled the world with him, observed him at work, gained access to the behind-the-scenes of major productions and the Academy Awards ceremony, and obtained access to hundreds of hours of his private recordings. The result is a portrait built on extraordinary closeness and trust, offering insight into both Richardson's work and his personal world.