‘The Peasants’ director on how the production had to survive the war in Ukraine and Covid-19 – Contenders Film LA

The farmers will be a difficult project even in the best of times. Like her previous film, I love VincentiusDirectors Hugh and DK Welchman oversaw a team of animators who painted every frame of the film using live-action reference material. said Hugh, who arrived in Los Angeles alone from Poland for his 12-minute Contenders panel The farmers also had to work on COVID and the war in Ukraine.

Between pandemic and war The farmers – the Polish entry for the Oscar for Best International Film – struggled to get all the painters in one room.

“We can’t do things remotely,” Hugh said. “At each of the painter-animation workstations, people sit in front of easels with a full lighting system.”

The farmers recruited painters from Poland, Serbia, Lithuania and Ukraine and faced 20 percent inflation over the years of production. Because of the war in Ukraine, many of the film crews were cut in half.

“We bought tickets for all women because the men were all of military age and so couldn’t go,” he said. “All the women came to the border. They were with their old mothers or their children. We had to find places to stay, places where their children could go to school.”

The farmers finally managed to open their studio in Kiev but lacked constant electricity.

“Our painters worked for an hour and a half and then sat and read by candlelight for five hours while they waited for the power to come back on,” he said.

The Welchmans eventually sold some of them I love Vincentius Paintings and started a Kickstarter campaign to buy a generator.

Covid stopped the live action portion of the recording. A scene involving 60 people tested positive and could not resume live filming for a year. Other live action footage had to be shot outside the studio space.

“We shot 10 percent of the film outside because we were fighting with 60 actors and 12 horses,” he said. “There isn’t a studio big enough for that in Warsaw, so we had to do it outside.”

The farmers is based on the Nobel Prize winning novel by Wladyslaw Reymont. Although Hugh’s wife, DK, had to read the book in high school, she reread the book in her twenties and listened to the audiobook while she worked. I love Vincentius. She convinced Hugh that they should adapt it for their next film.

“To me, it’s a great book about the human condition and human relationships,” he said. “It can’t just be a village in 19th-century Britain, but it can also be a village in 21st-century Britain. I thought it was a universal story.”

The book and film are about a woman who married an elderly widower but has an affair with his son. The Welchmans then convinced Penguin to do an English translation.

“We wanted to have a new translation made because the original translation was made by a Polish academic in the 1920s,” he said. “He was a specialist in Elizabethan English. I had to read it with a dictionary. I wouldn’t say it’s an easy read, but it’s worth it if you have the time. I wouldn’t call it easy, but it’s worth reading.”

The farmers play in Poland. It opens in December in New York for a qualifying run.

Come back on Monday for the panel video.

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