‘The Peasants’ Director On How The Production Had To Battle Through The Ukraine War & Covid — Contenders Film L.A.
deadline.comThe Peasants would already be a daunting project in the best of times. Like their previous film, Loving Vincent, directors Hugh and DK Welchman oversaw a team of animators painting each frame of the film based on live-action reference material.
Hugh, who came to Los Angeles from Poland just for his 12-minute Contenders panel, said The Peasants also had to work around COVID and the Ukraine War.
Between the pandemic and the war, The Peasants — which is Poland’s entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar — faced difficulty getting all of their painters in the same room. “We can’t do stuff remotely,” Hugh said. “We have people sitting in front of easels with a whole lighting setup in each of the painting animation workstations.” The Peasants recruited painters from Poland, Serbia, Lithuania and Ukraine and faced 20 percent inflation over the years of production.
The Ukraine war cut much of the film’s staff in half. RELATED: The Contenders Film: Los Angeles – Deadline’s Full Coverage “We bought tickets for all the women, because the men were all of military age so they couldn’t leave,” he said. “All the women came to the border.
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