DIRECTED BY: DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman
FEATURING: Kamila Urzędowska, Mirosław Baka, Sonia Mietielica, Robert Gulaczyk
PLOT: The Peasants follows the Boryna family in 19th-century rural Poland, caught in a fierce land dispute tangled with love, betrayal, and tradition. Structured around the seasons, the story explores cycles of labor, desire, and fate, capturing a world where, despite every effort, nothing truly changes.
COMMENTS: The Peasants blends not just painting and animation, but also live-action footage—and somehow, this mix hits the viewer like a ton of bricks. Dropped in 2023, this historical drama comes from the minds of DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman, the duo behind Loving Vincent. Just like that film, this one is brought to life with stunning hand-painted animation, giving every frame the feel of a moving canvas.
It is one of the most labor-intensive films ever made. First, it was shot digitally using high-flying drones. The aesthetic is exquisite, with visual nods to “Young Poland” painters like Józef Chełmoński, Ferdynand Ruszczyc, and Leon Wyczółkowski: think “Partridges in the Snow” and “Grain Harvesters.”
Then came the animation marathon: 100 artists from Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, and Lithuania, fueled by coffee and the spirit of Jean‑François Millet, hand-drew 56,000 frames over five years—hammering away every day and night, four hours per frame. It was like climbing Everest with paintbrushes instead of ice axes and easels instead of oxygen bottles.
Production paused twice—first for Covid, then for war. Female Ukrainian animators were relocated to Poland. The men stayed in Kyiv, drawing under Russian bombs and frequent blackouts—true martyrs of art. Later, another 78 digital artists added in-between frames. In total, about a million person-hours went into the film.
The story is adapted from Władysław Reymont’s The Peasants, winner of the 1924 Nobel Prize—a four-volume, 1,032-page agrarian epic that rivals Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha sagas. Set in Lipce, late 19th-century Russian Poland, it centers on a brutal battle over 6 acres of land—roughly half a football field.
Land matters here: in the late 1800s, Polish provinces of the Russian Empire were in a dire situation. Peasants owned just 9.2 acres on the average, the lowest share in the entire empire. Nobles still owned 86% of the land, leaving the peasants scraps. The movie covers everything a country melodrama needs: blood, love, rebellion, funerals, psychological trauma, and sour cabbage.
The film, like the book, is structured around four “seasons”—spring, summer, autumn, winter—but these aren’t just times of year. They’re four faces of the same unending loop in time.
At the heart of it is the glorious Boryna household and a tangled love polygon:
- Maciej Boryna, the patriarch. 58 years old, twice-widowed, a
powerhouse of rural life. He knows the innards of agriculture and cares deeply for his beloved cow, but dies like a tragic hero—fatally struck in the head by a forester during an epic brawl over woodland.
- Jagna Paczesiówna, the village nymph, a 20-year-old girl, who drips with enthusiasm, poetry and irresistible charm. She marries Maciej… for his chest of money, and spends private time with Antek in a haystack during a festival, then with the village elder, and then flirts with a young seminarian— but to no avail.
- Antek Boryna, Maciej’s son, married to Ganka with three kids. He cheats on Ganka with his stepmother Jagna, but by the end of the movie he rejects Jagna, jettisons his radical leanings, and learns to respect Ganka.
- Ganka Boryna rises from poverty. Initially shamed by her husband, father-in-law and a dog, she gains strength from Antek’s betrayal and emerges as the real victor of the story.
The cast also includes in-laws, cousins, uncles and goats — everyone you’d expect in a countryside.
I won’t spoil the twists—let the audience feel the chill of revelation. What matters is this: the film, paired with Lukasz “L.U.C.” Rostkowski’s uncanny score, evokes an unshakable sense of time looping. No matter what the characters do, they end up squarely where they began.
Maciej and Antek’s land disputes echo a “predestination paradox”—every attempt to change anything only cements the status quo. Maciej enforces order, Antek rebels, and by the film’s end, Maciej becomes his own father. Each “season” resets the board and starts it all over again.
The peasants here are creatures of ritual and superstition. They don’t just farm. They perform an endless ceremony their ancestors invented. They plant hope in spring, harvest despair in autumn, bury the dead in winter, and in summer, they sleep around, drink, and celebrate in ritualized abandon.
In the final reckoning, Maciej—resembling an Old Testament prophet clad in sturdy boots—proclaims solemnly: “As our forefathers lived, so shall we live, and so too shall our sons.” This cinematographic work does not concern itself with the past, but rather with the impossibility of the future. And therein lies its weirdness.
The Peasant pulled in a cool 10 million bucks worldwide. But in Poland it turned into a straight-up legend. The youth there went full TikTok and YouTube mode, throwing themed flash mobs, dissecting every costume and character vibe, and whipping up art and scene remakes in a cult craze.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: