The Girl and the Peasants: The Passion director Van Gogh adapts a Polish classic

In 19th century Poland, Jagna rebels against a marital future that has already been decided – this was without counting on her claimed independence.

The girl and the peasants is a unique cinematographic work, adapted from the Nobel Prize for Literature Farmers (between 1901 and 1909), written by the Polish writer Władysław Reymont.

The feature film uses the technique of rotoscoping (which makes it possible to realistically reproduce the dynamics of the movement of the subjects filmed in painting), an image technology used Tehran Taboo (2017), but also in The Van Gogh Passion (2017) directed by Hugh Welchan And DK Welchanwho reiterate the use of the technique in The girl and the peasants.

The pitch of the film? In the 19th century in a tense Polish village, young Jagna rebels against a clear-cut marital destiny. With a view to emancipation, she opposes the established order and challenges the codes of the time.

DK Walchan listened to the audiobook of the novel, while she painted the main plan of The Van Gogh Passion :

“I think I was struck by the beauty of Reymont’s descriptions of the village, the seasons and the surrounding nature. I found the characters endearing, even funny, much more than during my first reading, when I “I was 17. It’s a novel that requires patience and a little life experience”, she declared in the press kit.

The filmmakers returned to the inspiration for their project, and the influence of Polish artistic heritage:

“We selected paintings by Polish painters from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries and combined them with 21st century cinematographic and animation techniques. We were inspired by the works of more than thirty painters, from Michał Gorstkin-Wywiórski to Ferdynand Ruszczyc, but especially from Józef Chełmonski, of the realist school.”

The girl and the peasants will come out March 20, 2024 in theaters.