Following Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Wendell & Wild, and the latest Wallace & Gromit, Netflix is rolling out a new stop-motion film, and the trailer for I Am Frankelda is already blowing us away.
Fans of quirky, festival-hopping cinema have, for some, already had the chance to discover I Am Frankelda, the cinema-format prequel to the Mexican animated series Los Sustos Ocultos de Frankelda. Indeed, since 2025, the Mexican stop-motion feature written and directed by newcomers Arturo and Roy Ambriz has been winning over audiences at international genre-film festivals.
This flamboyant tale about a 19th-century horror novelist who must confront the monsters of her own creation in her subconscious has charmed audiences so much that I Am Frankelda is coming to Netflix very soon, and its trailer packed with fantastical imagery has just dropped.
Frankelda, a Mexican Coraline
I Am Frankelda is the first fully independent Mexican feature film entirely crafted in stop-motion, and it’s heartening to see Netflix ready to give it a premier place in its catalog. The platform isn’t chasing the stop-motion flag alone, having previously produced Henry Selick’s Wendell & Wild (famous for The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline), released Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and helped shepherd Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.
Moreover, Guillermo del Toro is no small part of I Am Frankelda‘s story, because the director, impressed by the Ambriz brothers’ ambition, became a patron to help bring the project to life.
Today, the general public will finally be able to discover the film whose trailer showcases a trove of highly colorful and rich images, with handcrafted animation that appears particularly complex and sophisticated, plunging us back into the golden era of stop-motion.
The universe, half cute, half morbid, simultaneously dark and flamboyant that seems to belong to Frankelda obviously echoes the works of the aforementioned Guillermo del Toro and Henry Selick, but also, unsurprisingly, nods to some of Tim Burton’s (great) films or Pixar’s Coco, even though the latter was CGI. In short, a stellar lineup that has both kids and adults eager. And that’s timely, because I Am Frankelda lands on Netflix on June 12.
