Dorota Kobiela

Dorota Kobiela (center) next to her husband Hugh Welchman (right) at a preview of the film Loving Vincent

Dorota Kobiela is a Polish painter, animation artist, director and screenwriter who was nominated for an Oscar for her animated film Loving Vincent .

Life

Polish painter and animation artist Dorota Kobiela is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw . For four consecutive years she was awarded the "Kulturstaatsstipendium" for special achievements in painting and graphics. Through friends, Kobiela discovered animation and film, plunged into these new artistic disciplines and attended the Warsaw Film School.

In 2004 she released the animated short films The Letter and Love me , the following year Mr Bear and in 2006 her first live-action short film The Hart in Hand . In 2011, Chopin's drawings followed and Little Postman , which was awarded as the best stereoscopic short film at the LA 3D Film Festival.

For her sixth animated short film, Loving Vincent , Kobiela wanted to combine her passion for painting and film and paint the entire film herself. However, when she expanded the project into a feature film, the task of writing and directing was so great that she had to be content with monitoring the 95 committed painters. The film, which she presented for the first time in June 2017 as part of the Festival d'Animation Annecy, is her feature film debut and is considered to be the first full-length animated film in which scenes filmed with real people were replicated in oil, frame by frame. In the film, Vincent van Gogh's images come to life to investigate the death of their creator and at the same time tell his life story. Loving Vincent has won several awards, including the 2017 European Film Awards for Best Animated Film.

Dorota Kobiela is married to British animator Hugh Welchman , with whom she co-directed Loving Vincent .

In late June 2018, Kobiela became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , as did her husband Hugh Welchman