'I Am Frankelda' Is a Stop-Motion Fever Dream You'll Never Want to Wake Up From

In the realm of animation, stop-motion has always comfortably occupied a height where the floor and ceiling of its quality sit so close they practically breathe the same rarefied air by simply existing as a time-consuming, lovingly handcrafted art. That’s just the truth of it. The medium never fails to be mesmerizing. And yet, somehow, I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first-ever feature-length stop-motion film, manages to punch straight through that already elevated artistic bar, delivering an unrelentingly imaginative, awe-inspiring work of art that’s not just good—it’s downright resplendent. I Am Frankelda, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro protégés Arturo and Roy Ambriz and animated by Cinema Fantasma, is best described as a gothic, occasionally musical, metanarrative stop-motion animated film that finds the truth in fiction. On a literal level, it’s a 19th-century tale that follows Frankelda (Mireya Mendoza), an aspiring horror author whose light is routinely dimmed by those around her. Things escalate to the fantastical when the monsters she crafts as an escape from her downtrodden reality come to life. Key among them is Herneval (Arturo Mercado Jr.), an owl-like prince livin