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The Peasants – the first animated feature film about the freedom of a Slavic woman

Ukrkino producers in collaboration with Polish and Serbian partners have begun work on a new film titled The Peasants. It is an original historical film that will be created using painting animation technique. Nearly a hundred painters will create 79,000 painted frames to tell the story of a young girl Jagna, her family and the life of ordinary peasants at the turn of the 20th century. The film is based on the novel of Wladyslaw Reymont, a Polish realist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for it.

Olha Zhurzhenko, Ukrkino Director and Co-Producer of the film shares with us how to take a long forgotten story off the shelf and turn it into an hour and a half-long modern film filled with action.

Producers: BreakThru Films (Poland), Ukrkino (Ukraine),  DIGITALKRAFT (Serbia)

Format: animation of 3D paintings – 12 paintings per second

Budget: 70% Poland, 15% Ukraine, 15% – Serbia

Release date: end of 2022

Idea with Ukrainian roots

The idea of The Peasants comes from the Polish film director Dorota Kobiela and producer Hugh Welchman from BreakThruFilms. They worked with Ukrkino on the world known film Loving Vincent and continued their collaboration in the new project, The Peasants.

BreakThruFilms producers, Hugh Welchman and Sean Bobbitt, have often had business with Ukraine. They even tried to open their own movie theaters in the country. In 2019, Mike Downey, the chairman of the European Film Academy, introduced the two producers to Olha Zhurchenko, Ukrkino Director. That was a start of their friendship and collaboration on experimental films.

“When we were shooting Loving Vincent, I learned that Dorota’s grandfather was from Lviv. She has Ukrainian roots and they often visit Ukraine with Hugh, because they are just crazy about everything Ukrainian,” tells Olha Zhurzhenko.  Working on the film about Van Gogh, the producers were impressed by the speed and diligence of 13 Ukrainian artists. Hugh, Dorota and Sean called Ukraine one of the most productive nations despite that the artists from Japan, USA, Australia, Poland, Germany, England, India and Spain also painted for Loving Vincent.

“It is not a story of suffering; it is a story of the power of love”

The script for the new film is based on the Polish classical novel – about the life of ordinary peasants and the fate of Jagna, the most beautiful girl in the village. The events and the plot resonate with the life in the Ukrainian villages; the novel resembles Kaidasheva Simya by its atmosphere. The lifestyle of the period, mentality and folk ornaments create a strong foundation for the story that happened 130 years ago.

“We are not trying to cling to those times; we seek to tell the viewers that the times change, but the person remains the same; that only the film’s ‘wrapper’ is innovative and the person is the focus. A person’s life then and now involves ongoing family quarrels, greed, anger and constant search of love and harmony. The underlying concept is to tell a complicated story of a woman in a beautiful way. And send an important message in the end – the main character Jagna simply wants to love and listen to her inner self, while ends up doing what her family and society tells her to do throughout the whole story,” tells Olha Zhurzhenko, co-producer of The Peasants.

The co-producer highlights the challenges of inner strength and defiance of a Slavic woman. There are also many other layers in The Peasants, supplementing the female essence and nature. There are layers about the village, men’s fidelity, relationships between parents and children, in particular about people surrendering to the opinion of the majority, the bandwagon effect. The unconditional love theme underlines every plot line associated with family and society.

A film where modern technology and art merge

Indeed, constant happiness is not a very close concept for the Ukrainian mentality. Creators of The Peasants seek to compensate the negativity with the beauty of the picture. The producers first used the painting animation technique in their previous film, Loving Vincent. This form of plot delivery is new for our viewers. The innovative approach provides a new way of watching the story unfold on the screen. That’s why the producers decided to use this technique in The Peasants. This will be a unique feature of the film, as nobody has ever shown peasant reality in such an original and interesting way.

The book the script is based on consists of four volumes that symbolize the four seasons: summer, autumn, winter and spring. The beauty of each season and the location of 1886 will be communicated through the frames of the film. The Peasants will be based on the paintings of the artists from that period. The majority of them were painted in the areas, which are currently a part of Ukraine.

The producers are currently selecting 25 Ukrainian artists, who will be learning film painting technique at the work stations at the Ukrainian House. Before they start painting, the whole film will be shot on video. All scenes will be played by actors on locations that will be decorated in the style of 1886. The complete video will be cut into frames and passed to the animators.

A special metal canvas will be installed at the artist’s work station with the light above. The projector shows a frame during live shooting at the location. Then, the artist creates a painting and takes a photo of it to capture the finished frame of the animated film. After that, the painter erases their work from the metal canvas and prepares for the next step.

This painted film technique will make the pictures more vivid, bringing to life the 100 minutes of the film about peasant lifestyle. Moreover, the style of the paintings will be based on the realism of artists of the 1800-1900s. It is this form of presentation, a different kind, that changes the perception of the distant, seemingly uninteresting to the modern viewer, past, according to Olha Zhurzhenko. “This film is all about the changes. It is for every modern-day woman: it is about the freedom of love, choice, self-expression – the inner freedom. On the other hand, the men will also see themselves in many characters. The Peasants, just like any other film of all times, pushes positive changes in people’s lives. If the characters in the film change, then the viewers also change,” explains the co-producer of The Peasants and Ukrkino Director.

The Peasants is expected to be released at the end of 2022. To have a better idea about the process of creation of this art project, the Ukrainians have an opportunity to view an online exhibition titled Loving Vincent. Its final part is dedicated to The Peasants film. You have an opportunity to immerse yourself in the world of film painting and learn about the creation of the film about Van Gogh, which gained international recognition and got an Oscar nomination. The exhibition is open until the end of 2020.

The project of the online exhibition “Loving, Vincent” is implemented with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.