Doha Film Institute co-financed film gets Oscar nomination

Doha: Doha Film Institute (DFI) co-financed film, Loving Vincent, has been nominated for Best Animated Feature section.

World’s first fully painted feature film, Loving Vincent is a cinematic ode to the remarkable life of legendary artist Vincent van Gogh.

The other films nominated in this category are The Boss Baby, The Breadwinner, Coco, and Ferdinand.

This is the fifth Oscar nomination for DFI in the last four years. In 2015 Timbuktu received an Oscar nomination, while Theeb and Mustang made it in 2016 and The Salesman in 2017.

Loving Vincent brings the paintings of Vincent van Gogh to life to tell his remarkable story. The Doha Film Institute has been a long-term partner on the project since the early stages of production.   

The film is written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, and produced by Academy Award-winning studios, Poland’s BreakThru Films and UK’s Trademark Films. Each of the 65,000 frames of the film is an oil-painting hand-painted by 125 professional artists who travelled from across the world to the studios of Loving Vincent in Poland and Greece. 

The film was first shot as a live action film with actors, who worked either on sets specially constructed to look like Van Gogh paintings or against green-screens. The footage from the live action shoot then becomes the reference for painting animators. The final effect is the interaction of the performance of the actors playing Vincent van Gogh’s famous portraits and that of the painting animators, who bring the characters into the medium of paint.

A major moment for DFI: our co-financed film LOVING VINCENT is #Oscar nominated for Best Animated Feature, marking our 5th #Oscar nomination in 4 consecutive years after TIMBUKTU (2015), THEEB and MUSTANG (2016) and THE SALESMAN (2017)! #Qatar #OscarNoms #Oscars2018 pic.twitter.com/3rRnJNn7xv

— Doha Film Institute (@DohaFilm) January 23, 2018

Co-produced by City of Wroclaw – European Capital of Culture 2016, Odra-Film/The Lower Silesian Film Fund and CeTA, the film is supported – in addition to the Doha Film Institute – by Silver Reel, RBF Productions, Sevenex Capital Partners, The Polish Film Institute, MEDIA, and Unibail-Rodamco.