With Loving Vincent, the directors Dk and Hugh Welchman attempted something that had never been done before: to create and edit together 65,000 oil paintings into a feature-length film. The result—which was the labor of 125 painters and numerous actors over the course of six years—was a unique amalgam of flesh, paint, and animation that earned the duo one of the top prizes at Berlinale as well as an Academy Award nomination. But that painstaking process, didn’t discourage the couple one bit. On the contrary, it inspired them to test the limits of filmmaking once again, as their latest film, The Peasants (which not only entailed the same artistic problems but was also interrupted in production by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), unquestionably proves. Ahead of the January 26 release, the new trailer for Poland’s Oscar entry has now arrived.
Adapted from Władysław Reymont’s beloved four-volume novel of the same name,...
Adapted from Władysław Reymont’s beloved four-volume novel of the same name,...
- 1/5/2024
- by Oliver Weir
- The Film Stage
"God did not create you to be poor!" Sony Classics has revealed an official US trailer for the hand-painted film The Peasants, an animated story of jealous men and angry villagers. They have been working on this for years, painting every single frame by hand to get it looking perfect. The film tells a heartbreaking story about an early 20th Polish peasant woman who creates havoc when she is forced to marry an older rich man. The epic classic novel of Wladyslaw Reymont has been brought to life using the popular realist and pre-impressionist paintings from the 19th Century, with an emphasis on the Young Poland Movement and the works of such artists as Józef Chełmoński, Ferdynand Ruszczyc and Julian Fałat. It's a follow-up to the first hand-painted film Loving Vincent, which was about Vincent Van Gogh. Every last shot is painted by artists, resulting in thousands of paintings at the end of production.
- 1/4/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Rotoscope-style animation gives this version of Władysław Reymont’s story an interesting look, but the performances and tone can’t live up to the visuals
Husband-and-wife film-makers Dk Welchman (née Dorota Kobiela) and Hugh Welchman made a real impression five years ago with their animation Loving Vincent, made in a pastiche style of Van Gogh’s own paintings using digital techniques to enhance hand-painted original work – a bit like the rotoscope approach of computer animation pioneer Bob Sabiston. A single-joke or single-idea movie, perhaps, but certainly interesting. Now, to some acclaim, they have done the same thing to the 1904-09 novel The Peasants by Nobel prizewinner Władysław Reymont (first adapted for Polish TV in the early 70s).
There’s the same digi-painted world derived from live action, the same visual effect of the forms and details on screen seeming always imperceptibly to throb or rustle, like a field of corn.
Husband-and-wife film-makers Dk Welchman (née Dorota Kobiela) and Hugh Welchman made a real impression five years ago with their animation Loving Vincent, made in a pastiche style of Van Gogh’s own paintings using digital techniques to enhance hand-painted original work – a bit like the rotoscope approach of computer animation pioneer Bob Sabiston. A single-joke or single-idea movie, perhaps, but certainly interesting. Now, to some acclaim, they have done the same thing to the 1904-09 novel The Peasants by Nobel prizewinner Władysław Reymont (first adapted for Polish TV in the early 70s).
There’s the same digi-painted world derived from live action, the same visual effect of the forms and details on screen seeming always imperceptibly to throb or rustle, like a field of corn.
- 12/5/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
New-made furniture, scuffed to look vintage, rarely convinces as anything other than pastiche. Portraits painted as closely as possible to resemble the photographs on which they’re based are a similarly strange phenomenon: admiration for the painter’s skill is undercut by the sense of creative constraint. For the same reasons “The Peasants,” on which married directors Dk and Hugh Welchman apply the technique — of hand-painting over live-action frames — that brought them breakout success with Van Gogh biopic “Loving Vincent,” is a film that impresses in its painstaking, years-long construction, without ever really supplying a reason (beyond prettiness) for such a laborious aesthetic.
To fully handpaint 40,000 oil paintings (which translates to around six frames out of every second of resulting footage) at a rate of five hours per painting, on top of the standard writing, casting, costuming, shooting, editing etc of live-action, is a mission so impractical that Quixote himself would probably have quailed.
To fully handpaint 40,000 oil paintings (which translates to around six frames out of every second of resulting footage) at a rate of five hours per painting, on top of the standard writing, casting, costuming, shooting, editing etc of live-action, is a mission so impractical that Quixote himself would probably have quailed.
- 10/11/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
It would have been natural for directors Dk Welchman and Hugh Welchman to follow up their highly acclaimed, arthouse smash hit Loving Vincent, about Vincent Van Gogh, with another film exactly in the same vein: Pining for Picasso, Mooning Over Monet, Rhapsodizing About Rembrandt — the possibilities seem aimless. But this talented husband-and-wife filmmaking team has taken their distinctive style of painterly cinema in an even more ambitious direction with their new effort, which received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Adapted from Polish author Wladyslaw Reymont’s Nobel Prize-winning novel, released in four parts from 1904 to 1909, The Peasants is a ravishingly beautiful visual triumph.
The folklore-style tale, set in a 19th-century rural Polish village, revolves around star-crossed lovers. Jamila (Kamila Urzedowska, stunning in animated form) is a young woman whose striking blonde beauty has made her both the subject of intense gossip among the villagers and the...
The folklore-style tale, set in a 19th-century rural Polish village, revolves around star-crossed lovers. Jamila (Kamila Urzedowska, stunning in animated form) is a young woman whose striking blonde beauty has made her both the subject of intense gossip among the villagers and the...
- 9/18/2023
- by Frank Scheck
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Here’s the best kind of cinematic double down: One that doesn’t just repeat a past triumph, but goes deeper.
“Loving Vincent” was a dreamy plunge into the art of Vincent Van Gogh, which directors D.K. Welchman and Hugh Welchman created via tens of thousands of oil paintings, each frame of the animated film a full-size work on canvas you could hang on a wall. They’ve said that they’re always asked, “When are we getting ‘Loving Vincent II’?” As in, another animated film about another artist rendered in that artist’s style.
Instead, the wife-and-husband directorial team swerved and delivered something infinitely more ambitious, if commercially more challenging. Their long-awaited follow-up is “The Peasants,” a sensuous, richly immersive adaptation of Nobel laureate Wladislaw Reymont’s early 20th-century novel about life in a rural Polish village. D.K. Welchman is Polish (“Loving Vincent” is technically the highest-grossing Polish...
“Loving Vincent” was a dreamy plunge into the art of Vincent Van Gogh, which directors D.K. Welchman and Hugh Welchman created via tens of thousands of oil paintings, each frame of the animated film a full-size work on canvas you could hang on a wall. They’ve said that they’re always asked, “When are we getting ‘Loving Vincent II’?” As in, another animated film about another artist rendered in that artist’s style.
Instead, the wife-and-husband directorial team swerved and delivered something infinitely more ambitious, if commercially more challenging. Their long-awaited follow-up is “The Peasants,” a sensuous, richly immersive adaptation of Nobel laureate Wladislaw Reymont’s early 20th-century novel about life in a rural Polish village. D.K. Welchman is Polish (“Loving Vincent” is technically the highest-grossing Polish...
- 9/13/2023
- by Christian Blauvelt
- Indiewire
After 2017’s Loving Vincent and Toronto International Film Festival world premiere The Peasants, it is clear that Dk Welchman and Hugh Welchman have developed a gorgeously distinct, personal, ludicrously involved style of filmmaking. Loving Vincent, a clever biography of Vincent Van Gogh, was sold as “the world’s first fully painted feature film,” and indeed it was. The painting process returns in The Peasants, an adaptation of Władysław Reymont’s early 1900s, Nobel Prize–winning novel. A staggering 40,000 frames of film were painted to bring The Peasants to life.
That is an incredible achievement, one that should give the filmmakers and all involved in the production a sense of pride. Unfortunately, watching the finished product inspires difficult questions. Was it worth it? Does the final product warrant the years of painstaking labor involved? Both questions must be answered with a firm no. The Peasants is a visually breathtaking, dramatically inert misfire.
That is an incredible achievement, one that should give the filmmakers and all involved in the production a sense of pride. Unfortunately, watching the finished product inspires difficult questions. Was it worth it? Does the final product warrant the years of painstaking labor involved? Both questions must be answered with a firm no. The Peasants is a visually breathtaking, dramatically inert misfire.
- 9/10/2023
- by Christopher Schobert
- The Film Stage
Danger Zone
Director: Vita Maria Drygas
Producer: Vita Żelakeviciute
Production companies: Drygas Film Production
Sales: Dogwoof
Documentary is a journey to places devastated by military conflicts, seen through the eyes of thrill-seeking tourists.
Delegation
(Generation 14plus)
Director: Asaf Saban
Cast: Yoav Bavly, Neomi Harari, Leib Lev Levin, Ezra Dagan, Alma Dishy
Producers: Agnieszka Dziedzic, Yoav Roeh, Aurit Zamir, Roshanak Behesht Nedjad
Production companies: Koi Studio, Gum Films, In Good Co.
Sales: New Europe Film Sales
Three Israeli friends visit Holocaust sites in Poland before their stints in the army, and deal with love, friendship and politics.
Disco Boy
(Competition)
Director: Giacomo Abbruzzese
Cast: Franz Rogowski, Morr Ndiaye, Laëtitia Ky, Leon Lučev
Producers: Lionel Massol, Pauline Seigland
Production companies: Films Grand Huit, Dugong Films, Panache Productions, La Compagnie Cinématographique, Donten & Lacroix, Division
Sales: Charades
Aleksei reaches Paris to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, which allows any foreigner, even undocumented, to be granted a French passport.
Director: Vita Maria Drygas
Producer: Vita Żelakeviciute
Production companies: Drygas Film Production
Sales: Dogwoof
Documentary is a journey to places devastated by military conflicts, seen through the eyes of thrill-seeking tourists.
Delegation
(Generation 14plus)
Director: Asaf Saban
Cast: Yoav Bavly, Neomi Harari, Leib Lev Levin, Ezra Dagan, Alma Dishy
Producers: Agnieszka Dziedzic, Yoav Roeh, Aurit Zamir, Roshanak Behesht Nedjad
Production companies: Koi Studio, Gum Films, In Good Co.
Sales: New Europe Film Sales
Three Israeli friends visit Holocaust sites in Poland before their stints in the army, and deal with love, friendship and politics.
Disco Boy
(Competition)
Director: Giacomo Abbruzzese
Cast: Franz Rogowski, Morr Ndiaye, Laëtitia Ky, Leon Lučev
Producers: Lionel Massol, Pauline Seigland
Production companies: Films Grand Huit, Dugong Films, Panache Productions, La Compagnie Cinématographique, Donten & Lacroix, Division
Sales: Charades
Aleksei reaches Paris to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, which allows any foreigner, even undocumented, to be granted a French passport.
- 2/19/2023
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
That dude could paint! There are biopics of artists that don’t ask more of an audience than that simple reaction. Not so with Julian Schnabel’s extraordinary At Eternity’s Gate, which features a monumental, career-best performance from Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh. It’s not that Schnabel doesn’t glory in the visions the Dutch painter put on canvas. But Schnabel, renowned as a painter in the way Van Gogh never was in life, wants to get inside the head of this tormented artist and make us see what he sees,...
- 11/14/2018
- by Peter Travers
- Rollingstone.com
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