Gemmi currently cannot deal with python path protocol objects (PEP 519, PEP 428):
$ python -c "import gemmi,pathlib; gemmi.cif.read_file(pathlib.Path('z'))"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: read_file(): incompatible function arguments. The following argument types are supported:
1. (filename: str) -> gemmi.cif.Document
Invoked with: PosixPath('z')
(Presumably this is the relevant section in the PEP)