What Happened
On June 12, Netflix quietly did something animation fans had been waiting on for months: it dropped I Am Frankelda to subscribers in every market at once. The film carries a label that sounds almost impossible in 2026 — it is the first feature ever made entirely with stop-motion animation in Mexico. Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning Pinocchio was only partly shot there, so this gothic musical is the real homegrown first, frame by painstaking frame.
The movie comes from Cinema Fantasma, the Mexico City studio run by brothers Roy and Arturo Ambriz, who first introduced their morbid little heroine in the 2021 HBO Max series Frankelda’s Book of Spooks. Released under its original Spanish title Soy Frankelda, the 104-minute feature is a prequel that traces how an orphaned 19th-century writer named Francisca Imelda crosses into the Realm of the Spooks and reinvents herself as the storyteller Frankelda. It is sung, it is spooky, and every word of it is in Spanish.
This is not a brand-new film so much as a long-awaited wide release. Soy Frankelda first landed in Mexican theaters back in October 2025, where it pulled in more than MXN 49.8 million (roughly US$2.86 million) and drew over 600,000 moviegoers, before traveling the festival circuit. The Netflix premiere is what finally hands it a global audience.
Why It Matters
Stop-motion is the slow food of animation. Artists move physical puppets a hair at a time and shoot a frame for every tiny adjustment, so a single finished second can swallow days of work. For a Mexican studio to attempt a feature-length fantasy world this ornate — baroque sets, two warring species of monsters, full musical numbers — is genuinely a milestone, not just a marketing line.
It helps to know who has been cheering them on. Del Toro, the patron saint of dark Mexican fantasy, has openly mentored and supported the Ambriz brothers, and you can feel his fingerprints in the film’s morbid whimsy. Critics have reached for comparisons to The Nightmare Before Christmas, and noted that while the puppetry may not be quite as glassy-smooth as a Laika or Aardman production, the sheer ambition — achieved for a fraction of those budgets — is the story.
There is a bigger picture, too. Mexico City has quietly become a serious animation hub, and a streaming giant putting a Spanish-language, distinctly Mexican film in front of every subscriber on the planet is exactly the kind of pipeline that lets local artistry travel. It is a small but real shift in who gets to make the next great handmade fantasy.
Reaction
The critical consensus has been warm, with a recurring shape to it: the eyes win, the plot lags. Reviewers have called the film mesmerizing and a feast for the eyes, praising sets that look lovingly handcrafted down to the visible materials. One Variety review summed it up as a major step forward for the medium in Mexico.
The flip side shows up in almost every write-up: the story is frontloaded with so much mythology — rival monster clans, a kingdom that runs on human fear, a jealous court writer stealing credit — that the narrative can feel dense before it finds its feet. Even so, the two showstopping musical numbers, one staged on a ship inspired by Mexican folk art and another rendered like a moving oil painting, have been singled out as the moments where everything clicks. After a festival run through Tokyo, Fantasia and Animation Is Film, the goodwill arriving on Netflix is real.
What’s Next
The most interesting question is what a global Netflix debut does for a studio like Cinema Fantasma. Theatrical numbers in one country are one thing; worldwide exposure is another entirely, and it could put the Ambriz brothers on the radar of awards voters and financiers who decide which animation gets funded next.
It also lands at a pointed moment for the craft itself. As studios lean harder into CGI and AI-assisted tools, a fully handmade feature is both a throwback and a statement. If I Am Frankelda finds the audience its visuals deserve, expect more ambitious stop-motion to get the green light — and expect Mexico to be part of that conversation rather than a footnote to it. A sequel or an expanded Frankelda universe is not hard to imagine.
Closing Thoughts
There is something quietly moving about a film whose central message — that putting pen to paper is how you take the reins of your own life — was itself made by hand, puppet by puppet, against long odds. Frankelda writes her way to freedom; her creators animated their way onto the world’s biggest streaming platform.
You do not have to love every twist of its dense plot to appreciate what I Am Frankelda represents. In an era of frictionless, machine-smoothed imagery, here is a movie that wears its fingerprints proudly — vibrant, strange, and unmistakably Mexican. It is the kind of thing worth seeking out, if only to remember how much wonder a pair of hands can still conjure.
한국어 요약
넷플릭스가 6월 12일 전 세계에 동시 공개한 I Am Frankelda(원제 Soy Frankelda)는 멕시코에서 처음으로 전편을 스톱모션으로 제작한 장편 애니메이션입니다. 멕시코시티의 시네마 판타스마 스튜디오를 이끄는 로이·아르투로 암브리스 형제가 만들었고, 2021년 HBO 맥스 시리즈 '프랑켈다의 괴담집'의 프리퀄로, 19세기 고아 작가 프란시스카 이멜다가 '괴물들의 세계'로 건너가 이야기꾼 프랑켈다로 거듭나는 과정을 그립니다. 2025년 10월 멕시코 극장 개봉 당시 약 4,980만 페소(약 286만 달러)를 벌며 60만 명 이상을 모았고, 영화제를 거쳐 이번에 넷플릭스로 전 세계 관객과 만났습니다.
스톱모션은 인형을 조금씩 움직여 한 프레임씩 촬영하는, 손이 매우 많이 가는 기법입니다. 멕시코 스튜디오가 바로크풍 세트와 두 종족의 괴물, 본격 뮤지컬 넘버까지 갖춘 장편 판타지에 도전했다는 점에서 의미가 큽니다. 멕시코 다크 판타지의 거장 기예르모 델 토로가 두 형제를 후원하고 멘토 역할을 해 온 것으로 알려져 있으며, 평단은 라이카·아드만급의 매끈함은 아니지만 훨씬 적은 예산으로 이뤄낸 야심을 높이 평가했습니다.
비평 반응은 '비주얼은 황홀하지만 서사는 다소 무겁다'로 모입니다. 손으로 빚은 듯한 세트와 두 편의 인상적인 뮤지컬 장면이 특히 호평받았습니다. 도쿄·판타지아 등 영화제를 거쳐 넷플릭스에 도착한 이 작품의 전 세계 공개는, CGI와 AI 도구가 지배하는 시대에 손으로 만든 애니메이션이 여전히 통한다는 증거이자 멕시코 애니메이션의 가능성을 보여 주는 사건입니다.
참고 / 출처: Netflix Tudum, Variety, RogerEbert.com