Considering all that Mexico has given cinema \u2014 the Three Amigos of Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n and Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu; Luis Bu\u00f1uel\u2019s Los Olvidados<\/em> and The Exterminating Angel<\/em>; Goal!<\/em>\u2019s fictitious footballing savant Santiago Mu\u00f1ez \u2014 it\u2019s a wonder that it\u2019s taken this long for the nation\u2019s first feature-length stop-motion animation to arrive. But arrive it has, and in quite some style. Hailing from Cinema Fantasma, a studio started by brothers Arturo and Roy Ambriz in a tent on their parents\u2019 rooftop, I Am Frankelda<\/em> \u2014 a prequel to the brothers\u2019 own hit Cartoon Network\/HBO Max show Frankelda\u2019s Book Of Spooks<\/em> \u2014 is a phantasmagorical wonder, bursting at the seams with bright ideas and jaw-slackening designs, and only sometimes buckling under the weight of its own sprawling mythos.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Released in 2021, Frankelda\u2019s Book Of Spooks<\/em> introduced viewers to the titular Frankelda (voiced by Mireya Mendoza), a quite literal ghostwriter loosely inspired by Mary Shelley. Almost a Mexican Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids<\/em>, the show sees Frankelda tell scary stories filled with Spooks \u2014 supernatural entities reliant upon human fear for their survival (yes, it\u2019s a bit Monsters, Inc.<\/em>) \u2014 aided by her curmudgeonly enchanted book Herneval (Arturo Mercado Jr). I Am Frankelda<\/em> then spirits us back in time to mid-19th century Mexico to tell us the story of how a frustrated young writer named Francisca Imelda, whose talents go unappreciated in a sexist society, first came to enter the mythical realm of Spooks; how the tortured prince Herneval lived (and loved) before becoming leatherbound; and how the Book Of Spooks<\/em> and its arachnoid and avian denizens came to be \u2014 and indeed nearly not<\/em> be \u2014 as the barriers between the realms of fantasy and fiction threatened to crumble. All in a sprightly 104 minutes!<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n …the world that has been built here \u2014 along with its weird, wonderful, and frequently many-eyed mythic figures \u2014 is nothing short of breathtaking.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n I Am Frankelda<\/em>, as you may have surmised by now, is a lot<\/em> to take in. And even for the most well-schooled of fantasy lovers, the Ambriz brothers\u2019 lore-rich, exposition-heavy brand of worldbuilding can at times feel overcomplicated to the point of distraction. Seven feuding clans is arguably about two too many for the Spooks\u2019 home of Topus Terrenus to comfortably handle; the Spooks\u2019 politically tumultuous history is less finely threaded through the narrative than totally knotted and tangled up within it; and when it comes to the finer details of I Am Frankelda<\/em>\u2019s particular brand of magic, a Tenet<\/em>-style \u2018don\u2019t try to understand it\u2019 approach is best advised. (All this and we haven\u2019t even talked about Luis Leonardo Su\u00e1rez\u2019s alternately terrifying and insipid, fuzzy-legged royal \u2018nightmarer\u2019 Procustes!) But still, the world that has been built here \u2014 along with its weird, wonderful, and frequently many-eyed mythic figures \u2014 is nothing short of breathtaking.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n There are flavours of Henry Selick and Tim Burton in Topus Terrentus\u2019 baroque, twisted Gothic architecture, all twisting towers and swirling staircases, crooked floors and cobwebbed nooks and crannies. There are hints of Jorge R. Gutierrez and of that great Mexican fabulist, Guillermo del Toro (an advisor and mentor figure on this film), in I Am Frankelda<\/em>\u2019s nightmarishly beautiful, beautifully nightmarish supernatural characters, each lovingly handcrafted with an ever-so-slight jankiness that only adds to the movie\u2019s DIY, \u2018I wish I could reach out and touch it\u2019 charms. Reaching beyond the world of cinema, the influence of Gustave Dor\u00e9 and his exquisite Divine Comedy engravings, and of Auguste Rodin\u2019s extraordinary \u2018The Gates Of Hell\u2019 sculptural rendition of Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em> \u2014 replicated, _Frankelda-_style, in the movie\u2019s dramatic opening \u2014 inexorably thrum beneath this film\u2019s surface, too, giving the world Cinema Fantasma has created a real sense of timelessness and grandeur.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even with all the myriad reference points and inspirations baked into I Am Frankelda<\/em>\u2019s DNA, however, make no mistake: this is a true original from the Ambriz brothers. Nowhere is this more evident than in the movie\u2019s showstopping \u2018Prince Of Spooks\u2019 sequence. Coming towards the end of the movie, at a moment where our spirited Goth-girl hero Frankelda\u2019s own creations seem to have overwhelmed her and the lines between the worlds of fiction and reality have been erased almost entirely, this musical number \u2014 a banging, operatic villain ballad the likes of which we\u2019ve not heard since The Hunchback Of Notre Dame<\/em> and Disney’s Renaissance Era heyday \u2014 really pushes the boundaries for the stop-motion medium, blending intricate puppetry, papercraft and gorgeous oil-painted segments into a real feast for the senses. (And if that mixed-media prospect tantalises, just wait til you see the glasswork, resin, and claymation creations that further colour and texture Topus Terrentus \u2014 truly, nothing here is done by halves.)<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Key, ultimately, to I Am Frankelda<\/em>\u2019s success, bringing balance to the movie\u2019s visual spectacle and unwieldy mythology, is the strength \u2014 and simplicity \u2014 of its core message. This is, when all\u2019s said and done, a story about what it means to be an artist who knows what they have to say, who knows how they want to say it, and who will go through hell \u2014 literally, if needs be \u2014 to be heard. To create on their own terms. This is what Frankelda does. And this is what the Ambriz brothers have done. Long may they continue.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n An everything-and-the-talavera-sink stop-motion delight that synthesises magic, music and the macabre into a mostly exhilarating, occasionally exhausting cinematic experience, Mexico\u2019s first stop-motion feature was more than worth the wait. Bring on its second!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Francisca Imelda (Habana Zo\u00e9), a frustrated young writer in 19th-century Mexico, turns into a ghost to travel to a fantastical realm where her macabre literary creations live. Accompanied by tormented Prince Herneval (Arturo Mercado Jr), Francisca \u2014 reinvented as Frankelda (Mireya Mendoza) \u2014 must try to restore the balance between fantasy and fiction. Considering all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10484,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10482\/revisions\/10484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/i-am-frankelda.jpg\")
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