---
name: "Dorota Kobiela"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/dk-welchman"
roles: ["Director","Editor","Writer"]
born: "1 January 1978"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
updated: "2026-09-17T07:18:22.012974+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Dorota Kobiela

Director and editor. Born 1 January 1978 in Bytom, Poland.

## Details

- **Work:** Director, Editor, Writer
- **Born:** 1 January 1978, Bytom, Poland
- **Also known as:** DK Welchman, 도로타 코비엘라, Dorota Kobiela-Welchman
- **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41825009, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3699790/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1003237

## Streaming the US now

- **Netflix:** [*Loving Vincent*](https://film.one/film/loving-vincent.md) (65)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Dorota Kobiela

> Dorota Kobiela makes animation that gives us time to look closely at painted brushstrokes. We value that care, but *Loving Vincent* is held back by a slow investigation that tells us too little about its subject.

In *Loving Vincent* (2017), the brushstrokes move, and the pleasure is in having time to look at them. Dorota Kobiela and co-director Hugh Welchman make the marks on van Gogh’s canvases worth our attention. That is a persuasive use of animation. We recommend it cautiously, for an interest in painting rather than a taste for detective stories. The pictures reward close attention; the questioning soon grows stiff.

Kobiela conceived *Loving Vincent* as a short around 2008, before it grew into a feature. *Little Postman* (2011) was an early example of stereoscopic painted animation in her short-film work. Her method recreates live-action footage frame by frame on canvas, retaining the style of particular painters while allowing their images to move. With *The Peasants* (2023), again co-directed and co-written with Welchman, she moved to an adaptation of Władysław Reymont’s novel. Its imagery draws on Polish realist painters, extending the painted approach beyond the work of van Gogh.

The difficulty in *Loving Vincent* is making the conversations as absorbing as the paintings. Douglas Booth’s Armand Roulin asks about van Gogh’s death, an approach that gives the people left behind a place in the story. But the screenplay, by Welchman, Kobiela and Jacek Dehnel, keeps asking for curiosity without making each conversation lead urgently to the next. We grew frustrated because the speculation about the death told us so little about the man. The decision to avoid a routine account of the painter’s life is sensible, but the enquiry needs more than the possibility of another explanation.

Kobiela also edits *Loving Vincent* with Justyna Wierszynska, and together they keep the questions easy to follow. They cannot stop the succession of interviews becoming repetitive. Clint Mansell’s music sustains the film’s tenderness towards van Gogh, though it cannot supply the missing urgency. We would return for another painted film, but would want the writing to give us more reason to care about the people in it. Start with *Loving Vincent* if moving brushstrokes are enough to hold your interest through a slow enquiry.

## Biography

Dorota Kobiela, also known as DK Welchman, is a Polish director, screenwriter and producer. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, she attended the Warsaw Film School and began her career with animated and live-action short films in the mid-2000s.

She is best known for co-directing, co-writing and editing the fully painted animated feature *Loving Vincent* (2017) with her husband Hugh Welchman; the film was the first of its kind and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. With Welchman she later directed and wrote the painted animation *The Peasants* (2023), an adaptation of Władysław Reymont’s novel.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, cineuropa.org, europeanfilmawards.eu.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Loving Vincent* (2017), Fi1m 65, Director, Editor, Writer — [page](https://film.one/film/loving-vincent.md)

## Also known for

- *The Peasants* (2023), Director, Screenplay

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/dk-welchman