The fact that LOVING VINCENT begins with informing the audience that the images were created by over 100 artists changes your perspective. Directors Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman focus on the last weeks of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh in the small French community Auvers-sur-Oise. The artistic genius went there after his stay in an insane ayslum to live out a creative period before he died of a gun shot injury under unclear circumstances. The ambitious film project was shot with actors and then processed with the help of rotoscope technology afterwards. All the scenes are based on van Gogh‘s oil painting and they were all painted over in oil visuals frame by frame after filming. That‘s how the filmmakers succeeded in telling a story that developed out of van Gogh‘s own paintings and come alive here. It took six years to perfect this unique technique. But the superlative form of production is not the reason for the film, but rather the belief that you can‘t tell the visual story of the painter without his work. The fusion of the artist and his work has rarely been more impressive. In order to do justice to his contradictory character and the mysterious circumstances of his death, they oriented themselves on a film classic: similar to Orson Welles CITIZEN KANE, LOVING VINCENT sends young Armand Roulin on a research trip with the last letter of the dead painter where he tries to reconstruct the events with the help of witness statements and the artist‘s friends.

Jens Mayer

Translation: Elinor Lewy