Filmmakers Roy and Arturo Ambriz Reject AI for 'I Am Frankelda,' Embrace Traditional Stop-Motion Craft

I Am Frankelda (Spanish: Soy Frankelda), directed and written by siblings Roy and Arturo Ambriz, is now available worldwide on Netflix and is notable as Mexico's first feature-length stop-motion animated film. The story centers on Francisca Imelda, an 18-year-old writer in 1866 Real del Monte, Mexico, who adopts the pen name Frankelda and discovers that her fictional monsters have taken on lives of their own in a parallel dimension called the Realm of Terrors. The Ambriz brothers drew inspiration from Mary Shelley, imagining what her experience might have been like had she been born in Mexico, and the film serves as a prequel to their 2021 Cartoon Network Latin America series Frankelda's Book of Spooks. Guillermo del Toro, whose relationship with the brothers began 17 years ago when Roy emailed him as a fan, played a pivotal role: after viewing an early cut screened at Annecy and other festivals, del Toro engaged in near-daily conversations with the filmmakers, suggested re-edits and reanimated scenes, and ultimately helped them secure Netflix distribution. The film's intricate puppet craftsmanship — visible in its detailed gothic sets and expressive replacement-face animation — has drawn comparisons to The Nightmare Before Christmas and del Toro's own Pinocchio. Critics have praised its visual ambition while noting its dense, sometimes unwieldy narrative. The Ambriz brothers have also publicly positioned the film as a statement against AI in filmmaking, pledging to shoot their next project entirely without green screen or AI tools.