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As a follow-up to 2017's Academy Award-nominated movie Loving Vincent, the gorgeously animated The Peasants is very impressive on a technical level. The film is a labor of love, a visual beauty brought to life by hundreds of artists across the planet. The team spent over five years weathering an ever-changing world (including a global pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine impacting one of the animation studios) to produce a work that—at its best—is a genuine marvel to look at.

The Peasants' problem is that its central characters and story can't always match its stunning visual heights. The Peasants is a bittersweet and harsh tale that doesn't offer much new perspective on the classic narrative it tackles, ultimately failing to make an impression beyond the surface level. While it may be wonderfully produced and looks absolutely beautiful, The Peasants struggles to impress on its own merits as a story and film.

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,...

"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.

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.

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.

Exclusive: Poland will submit animated feature drama The Peasants for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards.

The picture is the latest work from Dk Welchman (previously known as Dorota Kobiela) and Hugh Welchman, the creative duo behind the groundbreaking, Oscar-nominated, hand-painted biopic Loving Vincent.

The pair co-wrote The Peasants screenplay adaptation from Nobel Prize-winning writer Władysław Reymont’s classic 1905 novel of the same name about a young woman determined to forge her own path within the confines of a late 19th century Polish village.

Poland’s Oscar entry choice was made Monday by a selection committee overseen by the Polish Film Institute. There was a strong offering of Polish films this year, with other potential contenders including Agnieszka Holland’s migrant drama Green Border and Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englerts’ transgender drama Woman Of.

Related: Agnieszka Holland’s Migrant Crisis Drama ‘Green Border’ Posts Record Opening Weekend...

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...

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...

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.

On the JoBlo Movies YouTube channel, we will be posting one full movie every other day throughout the week, giving viewers the chance to watch them entirely free of charge. The Free Movie of the Day we have for you today is the thriller Jack Strong, starring Patrick Wilson. You can watch it over on the YouTube channel linked above, or you can just watch it in the embed at the top of this article.

Written and directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski, Jack Strong has the following synopsis: In the midst of the Cold War, Ryszard Kuklinski, a colonel in the Polish army, challenges the Soviets when the communist regime was still powerful. The colonel discovers that Poland was the target of the US plans for a nuclear counterattack.

Wilson is joined in the cast by Marcin Dorocinski, Maja Ostaszewska, Dimitri Bilov, Dagmara Dominczyk, Oleg Maslennikov, Ireneusz Czop, Miroslaw Baka, Zbigniew Zamachowski,...

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.

Squared Love All Over Again (Miłość do kwadratu jeszcze raz) is a movie directed by Filip Zylber starring Adrianna Chlebicka and Mateusz Banasiuk..

In this second part of Squared Love we continue where we left off and go on more or less as expected, trying to turn over the screenplay and say “nothing new here” and will try, using the same framework, to make it work.

And, using these same frameworks, it didn´t work the first time around and doesn´t work the second time.

However, this is a movie that divides specialized reviewers and the audience: The first one was totally profitable.

Storyline

A famous journalist and a fashion model teacher try to redo their lives and return to their jobs after a passionate relationship. When they return, they discover that things have changed, forever?

Movie Review

Squared Love Again is a movie to be measured with two...

Delivery by Christmas (Jeszcze przed swietami) is a comedy movie starring Monika Frajczyk and directed by Aleksandra Kulakowska and Maciej Prykowski.

A comedy that fuses social realism with the Christmas spirit, in this story of a corporate mix-up.

Premise

Marysia’s career as a courier is on line as a spiteful coworker sabotages her deliveries. Thankfully, a helpful customer comes to the rescue.

Movie Review

Very paced and different to the customary Christmas numbers we are used to see. A genuinely Polish, European movie that distances itself from Hollywood, as you will see in the characterizations, which are more realistic and natural. But, that does not stand in the way for the “magic” that is so characteristic of Christmas rom-coms.

With some deadpan schticks pulled off by good performers it lightens the mood of the film. A comedy that pokes fun at everything quotidian.

This is not a formulaic Christmas movie,...

"What now? Shall we shoot each other?" Shout Studios has released an official Us trailer for a Polish WWII action thriller titled The Resistance Fighter, commemorating the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, the largest resistance operation in WWII Europe. The original Polish title is Kurier, which translates to The Messenger, but it has a whole new name for the Us release. Based on a true story, the film is about the Polish resistance fighter / war hero Jan Nowak-Jeziorański. He works as the courier between the Poland's resistance movement and the Polish government in exile in London, and is pursued ceaselessly by the Nazis. "The stakes could not be higher in this riveting wartime thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat!" Philippe Tlokinski stars, with Julie Engelbrecht, Bradley James, Martin Butzke, Nico Rogner, Patricia Volny, Jan Frycz, Tomasz Schuchardt, Grzegorz Malecki, & Miroslaw Baka. Take a look. Here's...