Click here to copy URL

The Peasantsanimation

Submissions for Best International Feature (Academy Awards 2024)

Chlopi

2023

DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman

Animation, Andrzej Konopka, Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz, Robert Gulaczyk ...

6.9

478

Animation. Drama It tells the story of a peasant girl Jagna forced to marry a much older, wealthy farmer Boryna, despite her love for his son Antek. With time, Jagna becomes the object of envy and hate of the villagers and has to fight to preserve her independence. Set in the Polish countryside on the cusp of the 19th and 20th Centuries, the story’s dramatic turns tie into the changing seasons, hard labour in the fields and traditional local holidays.

	Media	Author	Review
		Nikki Baughan Screendaily	"A dynamic, immersive drama that brings the pleasures and pains of the past to ravishing life"
		Christopher Schobert The Film Stage	"'The Peasants' is a visually breathtaking, dramatically inert misfire. Overwrought and dreary, it is a noteworthy effort that is nonetheless a major disappointment."
		Christian Blauvelt IndieWire	"A sensuous, richly immersive adaptation of Nobel laureate Wladislaw Reymont’s early 20th-century novel about life in a rural Polish village."
		Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"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 (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Kambole Campbell Empire	"Disappointingly conventional (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"
		Ankit Jhunjhunwala The Playlist	"The narrative proceedings provide sufficient interest for the duration, making it easy to recommend this film. The film might also interest viewers younger than your typical arthouse audience"
		Greg Nussen Slant	"Despite the extraordinary effort that went into its making, the film is remarkably flat"
		Jessica Kiang Variety	"A film that impresses in its painstaking, years-long construction, without ever really supplying a reason (beyond prettiness) for such a laborious aesthetic"
		Frank Scheck The Hollywood Reporter	"A sumptuous animated portrait of a Polish village (...) The Peasants is a ravishingly beautiful visual triumph."
		Michael O'Sullivan The Washington Post	"[It] goes for dazzle over depth (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"
		Natalia Winkelman The New York Times	"As the story's melodrama grows repetitive, so do the visuals"
		Tomris Laffly rogerebert.com	"Its beauty hardly matters after a while when one remembers that this is a movie and not a museum piece (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"
		Wendy Ide The Guardian	"Striking if grim tale of a young woman who falls foul of the patriarchy (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"
		Tara Brady Irish Times	"This Polish yarn of haystack sex and cabbage parties is a waste of paint (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Ross Bonaime Collider	"DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman bring Polish culture and art to life in stunning fashion (...) another unbelievably ambitious project that was filmed in live action and then painted over with 40,000 oil paintings"
		Brandon Zachary CBR	"It has moments where it showcases the potential, turning grounded and pure moments into moving portraits. But [it has] limitations of scope and subject matter"
		G. Allen Johnson San Francisco Chronicle	"The Welchmans' visual style is eye-popping —how they did it is shown during the end credits— but to what end? (...) Rating: ★ (out of 4)"
		Kyle Smith The Wall Street Journal	"With its feel for both beauty and ugliness, the film transports us to this unfamiliar milieu with a richness rarely attempted in the cinema anymore"
		Kevin Maher The Times	"An extraordinary animation of a Polish novel (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.