the adaptation of the 1924 Nobel Prize for Literature, in an extraordinary animated film

Authors of “The Van Gogh Passion”, DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman adapt “The Peasants” after Władysław Reymont into an animated film full of grace.

DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman plow their furrow with beautiful and original animation, discovered in The Van Gogh Passion, where the filmed images of the actors are repainted by hand.

With The Girl and the Peasants, which comes out Wednesday March 20, they transform the essay. The directors no longer refer to the style of the Dutch painter, but to Slavic art, the action taking place in Poland. A jewel.

Rigor and heart

Jugna, a young beauty from a Polish peasant village in the 19th century, is promised to a large landowner, whom she refuses to marry. Rejecting current traditions, accusing the village of deciding her life, and denouncing the power and contempt that men exercise over her, Jagna will confront a surly community to gain her independence.

By adapting Władysław Reymont, the two filmmakers tackle a Polish literary giant, not only Nobel Prize winner for Farmersbut also author of The promised landhis previous novel, which dealt with industry and the emerging urban world. Farmers would be their rural equivalent. If the novel and its adaptation deal with a new world in progress, in a realistic style, they are no less rich in feeling and emotion. This alliance of rigor and heart is found in the very particular creation of The Girl and the Peasants.

Societal poetry

The images in the film are originally of the actors filmed in rudimentary settings or on a green screen. The photograms of each shot were painted on 67×49 cm canvases in the directors’ pictorial style. Filmed, they were then processed by digital artists, who filled in the gaps between each step. The realism of the movement combines with the color of the feelings. The pictorial material is rich, the result is warm, vibrant, luminous, like a living painting.

Adaptation of a thousand-page novel, The Girl and the Peasants finds its place alongside The Tree of Hooves (Ermanno Olmi, 1978) or Tess (Roman Polanski, 1979), in their description of the changing rural world in the 19th century, with a very contemporary feminist discourse. In the light of a classic fable, whose imagery is a mixture of tradition and modernity, The Girl and the Peasants participates in poetry serving a current societal cause.

The sheet

Gender : Animation / Drama
Directors: DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman
Actors: Kamila Urzedowska, Robert Gulaczyk, Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz
Country : Poland / Serbia / Lithuania
Duration : 1h54
Exit : March 20, 2024
Distributer : The Jokers / The Bookmakers

Synopsis: In the 19th century, in a Polish village in turmoil, young Jagna, promised to a rich landowner, revolts. She takes her destiny in hand, rejects traditions and upsets the established order. Then begin the seasons of anger…