I Am Frankelda (dirs. Arturo Ambriz and Rodolfo Ambriz)

by Jack Martin | Jun 12, 2026

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 103 mins

UK Distributor: Netflix

UK Release Date: 12 June 2026

WHO’S IN I AM FRANKELDA?

Mireya Mendoza, Arturo Mercado Jr., Luis Leonardo Suárez, Carlos Segundo, Beto Castillo, Assira Abbate, Arturo Ambriz, Lourdes Ambriz, Roy Ambriz, Antonio Badía, Sergio Carranza, Jesse Conde, Idzi Dutkiewicz, Karla Falcón, Magda Giner, Anahí Allué, Laura Torres, Juan Pablo Monterrubio, Habana Zoé

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Arturo Ambriz and Rodolfo Ambriz (directors, writers, producers), Kevin Smithers (composer), Fernanda G. Manzur and Irene Melis (cinematographers), Gabriel Acuña (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

In 18th century Mexico, a young writer (Mendoza) enters a world where her stories are real…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON I AM FRANKELDA?

Mexico has technically been making animated films for over a century, with the 1915 silent short Mi Sueño being the first recorded instance of the country’s domestic animation industry. This fact alone makes it all the more baffling that Mexico has only now made its first ever stop-motion animated movie, after more than a hundred years of sticking primarily with traditional hand-drawn or more recently computer-generated animation.

But filmmaker brothers Arturo and Rodolfo Ambriz are not too deterred by the weight that lays on their shoulders, as their (and their country’s) debut stop-motion feature I Am Frankelda, produced through their Cinema Fantasma studio, is a greatly ambitious venture that combines plenty of heavy gothic imagery and excessively fantastical storytelling to give Tim Burton the biggest hard-on of his life. However, while the ambition is deeply admirable and shows in every hand-crafted frame on the screen, it is narratively and often stylistically a bit too cluttered for it to truly be as intricate and sophisticated as it clearly wants to be.

I Am Frankelda is a prequel to the Ambritz brothers’ TV show Frankelda’s Book of Spooks, a short-lived but widely respected stop-motion anthology series created for Cartoon Network’s Latin American division, with the film opening in 18th century Mexico where young aspiring writer Francisca Imelda (voiced by Mireya Mendoza in the original Spanish-language version) creates spooky stories about fantastical creatures that exist in a world known as the Topus Terrenus. What she doesn’t know is that Topus Terrenus and its monstrous inhabitants actually exist in a parallel realm, where the ruling royals and their owl-like son Prince Herneval (Arturo Mercado Jr.) are tasked with distributing nightmares to the human world. But with the kingdom in decline thanks to the mediocre efforts of designated “nightmare-teller” Procustes (Luis Leonardo Suárez), Herneval resolves to bring Francisca – who has rebranded herself as “Frankelda” after failing to get her work published as herself – to Topus Terrenus where she may provide her signature brand of terrifying tales as the realm’s new nightmare-teller, much to the dismay of Procustes who sets out to cling onto his power whatever way he can, even if it means igniting a revolution.

You can tell that I Am Frankela was a project of passion simply by looking at all the intricate and unique designs of these sets, characters, props and backgrounds, all of which the Ambritz brothers and the handful of animators at their disposal have clearly put their heart and soul into to make it look as refined as possible. It’s a gorgeously designed movie, with lots of gothic-inspired artwork and some creative visuals, such as a sea of clouds where the arms of the presumably damned form the literal waves, adding to the illustriousness of this realm. As for the stop-motion animation, it is certainly quite janky and rough around the edges – though with the budget they had, much of it reportedly scraped from the brothers’ own savings, this film was never going to achieve the smoothness of your average Laika movie – but there is a distinct grotesque charm to it all as you can always feel the fingerprints on each character model or piece of set decoration, even as the designs become intentionally more nightmarish.

The issue, however, is that the movie goes by at such a rapid pace that there isn’t quite as much time to truly absorb any of it. Apparently, the movie was originally closer to a two-hour runtime before ten minutes were removed at the behest of Guillermo del Toro (who served as a mentor figure for the filmmakers), and you can tell it’s been trimmed because there’s a noticeable lack of pause in between most scenes or dialogue exchanges that would allow the viewer to take it all in, or at the very least to form a strong emotional connection with it all. By the time a scene has firmly established certain pieces of plot information and character development, it moves straight onto the next narrative beat without even stopping for breath, which can sometimes cause the viewer to feel lost or, worse, disinterested in this otherwise visually astounding world, since there’s rarely a moment to mentally process it all. If anything, it leaves you curious as to what was in those ten minutes before they were ultimately cut, for it’s possible they could have contained all the clarity and breathing spaces that the final version seems to lack.

Unfortunately, the breakneck speed at which things are presented, either as visual cues or sometimes in the form of song – did I mention that this movie is also a musical? – also effects the animation itself. While it just about retains its hand-crafted charm as per the earlier paragraph, the janky quality combined with the borderline incomprehensible pacing causes a lot of the visuals to feel less whimsical and more unpleasant. Somewhat appropriately, it amounts to a particularly vivid fever dream where things are always being thrown at you without restraint, to where it can be difficult to keep up with not just the storytelling but how the Ambritz brothers are telling it, no matter how much you want to invest yourself into everything they’re trying to do.

But none of that is to say that I Am Frankelda is a bad movie. A flawed one, perhaps, but when you have something like this which has clearly had plenty of passion pumped into nearly every aspect of it, the film becomes impossible to fully break down from a critical perspective. At least Mexico can now claim to have a stake in the stop-motion game, with a plentiful if imperfect offering that contains just about enough to satisfy animation lovers.

SO, TO SUM UP…

I Am Frankelda is a visually striking fantasy that boasts some exceptional production values as well as some charmingly janky stop-motion animation, but its overly rapid pacing causes the narrative and even parts of the aesthetic to become lost within the film’s own unrestrained approach.