Dorota Kobiela Welchman – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

THE PEASANTS (TIFF 2023) – Review by Leslie Combemale

September 18, 2023September 21, 2023 Leslie Combemale Dorota Kobiela Welchman, hugh welchman, loving vincent, Painting Animation Work Stations, PAWS units, The Peasants, TIFF 2023, Wladyslaw Reymont, Young Poland movement

This is the second animated feature by directing wife and husband team Dorota Kobiela Welchman and Hugh Welchman after their Oscar-nominated success Loving Vincent. Based on a novel of the same name by Nobel lauriate Wladyslaw Reymont, it features the technique created by the company for Loving Vincent. Using painting animators working on specially designed PAWS units (Painting Animation Work Stations), live action footage is used to create oil paintings, which make up the finished imagery seen in the film.

Festivals Interviews

DK and Hugh Welchman on THE PEASANTS (TIFF 2023) – Leslie Combemale interviews

There’s a new animated feature from writer/director wife and husband team Dorota Kobiela (DK) and Hugh Welchman known for the Oscar-nominated film Loving Vincent, called The Peasants. It’s based on a novel of the same name by Polish 1924 Nobel laureate Wladyslaw Reymont, a thousand-page tome so well-known in Poland that it’s taught in schools, and considered one of the classics of world literature. Created in the same style as Loving Vincent, The Peasants was filmed in a technique in which live action is shot, and then used as reference and interpreted through oil paintings, each created by hand at four studios in Poland, Serbia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Those oil paintings then are shot and become the images seen as the finished film. Women made up 75 to 80% of the artists working on the film.