While Amazon trolls us with the announcement of a KPop Demon Hunters AI mockbuster, Netflix is fortunately continuing to bring real animation to its streaming platform. I Am Frankelda, billed as Mexico’s first independent stop-motion feature film, will be available to watch in just two weeks’ time, and the trailer has animation fans captivated already.
I Am Frankelda (Soy Frankelda in Spanish) is a dark fantasy horror musical directed by Arturo Ambriz and Roy Ambriz. The brothers run the Mexico City-based animation studio Cinema Fantasma, which also produced Adult Swim’s Women Wearing Shoulder Pads.
Set in 19th-century Mexico, the movie is a prequel to the anthology series Frankelda’s Book of Spooks, which was shown on Cartoon Network Latin America back in 2021. It tells the story of a young writer who travels into her subconscious mind and comes face to face with the characters from her own spooky stories.
Guillermo del Toro was involved as a mentor for the project, while Beto Petiches was animation director. The movie attracted over 600,000 cinemagoers and grossed over MXN $49.8 million (US $2.86 million) in Mexico after it was released in October last year.
The trailer for its release in English on Netflix has immediately led to comparisons with Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas due to the combination of dark fantasy, musical numbers and magical stop-motion animation style.
Stopmotion animation has been seeing a bit of a revival at the moment. Check out Laika’s Wildwood trailer as well as Canva’s stopmotion ad campaign and the Unreal Engine 5 stopmotion game Out of Words.
In the interview below, the Ambriz brothers explain their love for the genre, noting that it incorporates several artforms: sculpture, painting, photography and filmmaking. They say they prefer the tactile approach over 3D animation since the latter requires “layer and layers” of work on a computer to make it look presentable. Also check out the concept art, making-of video and footage from the Soy Frankelda exhibition held at Mexico City’s Cineteca Nacional.
I Am Frankelda will be released on Netflix on 12 June in its original Spanish version with subtitles and as an English dub.
