Brothers Arturo and Roy Ambriz take the art of stop motion and their love of fantasy-horror into new realms with “I am Frankelda,” debuting on Netflix June 12.
Set in Mexico in the late 1800s, the story centers on Francisca, a gifted writer of dark tales and fantastical characters. But after her mother dies, she must live with her rigid grandmother, who forces her to live by her rules. But as she grows into a young woman, it’s clear that her imagination and need to write stories has never been suppressed. And the monsters she has created are real — guided by Herneval, a prince trapped between dreams and nightmares, Francisca finds her voice – Frankelda – and reclaims her power as a storyteller as she helps Herneval defeat the evil forces intending to take down his world.
“I am Frankelda” uses the most intricate and visually stunning stop motion in a tale of empathy, determination and female empowerment. While the core of stop-motion animation is its hand-wrought look, more is more with the look of “I am Frankelda” — more texture, more ornamentation, more to see in every frame.
“My brother Roy and I have always loved physical objects,” says Arturo on a Zoom call from their base in Mexico City — indeed, they are sitting on a couch with models of Frankelda and Herneval on a table in front of them, gloriously tactile sculptures in their design and execution. “When we were kids, we were obsessed with playing with toys and going to the theater and doing handcrafts. We were never that much drawn into video games or digital experiences. We really enjoy working with our hands, feeling textures.”
He adds: “Roy was crazy as a kid, because when he received a toy, he had to watch it from every angle and approve if it looked like the real character or if it didn’t — and when the toy wasn’t properly detailed, he would grab any materials he had in the house to correct them, and then build dioramas. We played with toys every day, so a common scenario for us was, for example, watching ‘Space Jam’ on TV for the 100th time, and at the same time playing with the toys, trying to reenact every scene. So when we decided to study filmmaking, it was very natural for us to go to the path towards stop motion, creating puppets, building sets, lighting them, thinking about the writing and the way each character would be expressed. So, for us doing this kind of film and creating stop motion, it’s just the way in which we have professionalized what we have been doing since we were very young kids.”
“I am Frankelda” marks an historic milestone as Mexico’s first-ever feature-length stop-motion production, developed and produced by the Ambriz brothers at their Mexico City-based studio, Cinema Fantasma.
The story of Frankelda mimics the brothers’ own story, says Roy.
“I think that this is a really personal story for us. It could be almost biographical, because while we were writing the script, we were living very similar situation that Frankelda faces. There were a lot of producers who told us that we would not be able to produce our own film, to create our own stuff. They told us that we should quit our dreams,” he says.
But the brothers persisted. “We were really frustrated, and we were really angry, and we decided to give that frustration to Frankelda, and it was a relief for us as authors, because we could start a healing process.” With Herneval, “he’s a prince in which his own world is falling apart, he feels responsible to save his friends, his family, and to save the world, and I think that that’s how Arturo and I feel with a stop motion studio in Mexico, because every day it’s really difficult,” Roy says. How are we going to pay the rent, pay our artists? He says, “We have been living in that style of life for 15 years now, in which every day it feels that the dream is going to fall apart, but somehow, with the help of really talented friends and artists, we managed to keep going. I think that those different elements were the key points in creating this tale, and also it was a way for us to tell the world, and young artists, you should follow your dreams, and you are valuable as an author, as a creator, and nobody can tell you that you cannot follow your dreams.”
“I am Frankelda” also features original songs, like a classic musical. But it’s no Disney — or even Tim Burton-ish — with the main characters from the world of nightmares and a young woman battling for acceptance with a creature that looks like a mashup of a phoenix, cat and pirate by her side, and falling in love, too.
“First of all, we absolutely adore musicals, and going to the theater and watching musicals,” says Roy, “but what always amazes us is when we are able to take a backstage tour or see the wardrobe in the museum, you see all these details in each stage and in the decision behind each fabric.”
Fabric and silhoutte work together onstage to give audiences an immediate grasp of who a character was. “We really wanted to do that work on a silhouette, in which you could have the characters to be very recognizable. One is blue, the other one is red, the antagonist is green, so it’s very obvious, and in the shapes, but when you go into a close or a medium shot, you have all this detail that is informing you of the story and the background of each character, if they are from high class, middle class, low class, if they are aspiring to be higher than they currently are, or if they are playing down their role for their position. At the same time we wanted to keep, despite all that detail, the characters’ faces as simple and as cartoonish as possible,” Roy says.
“We’re very aware of the fact that sometimes stop motion could be alienating, or could be like so much to handle, because of all that detail, and the way it’s kind of creepy, but if you balance it with these faces, which are very broad and big eyes and very specific features, you are able to mix both worlds,” he adds.
They were inspired by the 19th century illustrator and engraver Gustave Doré. “His engravings are breathtaking because they feel like enormous monumental spaces being taken over by nature and by creatures of all sizes, so his art gives you a sense of walking into a place that only exists in your nightmares,” says Roy. “So we created a world of monsters, which is not what we have seen on film. We wanted to make a high culture of monsters, a very refined culture in which they have fragrances and cuisine and architecture. We wanted to give that kind of renaissance feeling to the overall world building.”
Herneval and his parents — the king and queen — convey stories and nightmares to the physical world through music and vibrations, using a beautiful harp that looks like a spider web, which is also inspired by a “fountain that can be found in the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City,” says Arturo.”There’s this kind of great trunk that connects to a ceiling and waterfalls, it’s beautiful.”
At the production’s largest, they had about 120 people working on the project. At first, they created the faces of Frankelda, Herneval and other characters by hand. “We created molds, and then we casted them using resin. That’s how the series was made, and this was how the film started,” says Roy. “But later on, we learned how to do digital sculpting, and we incorporated a lot of 3D printing for sets and for the newest characters, but it was a process, and it’s always a balance. Even though you 3D print a face, it was painted by hand, and all the little feathers were glued and pasted by hand, and wardrobe was hand-tailored. So I think that a balance between the digital world and the physical world, just like the Frankelda — the two worlds that work together — was the key element in order to manage productions such as complex as this one.”
For the brothers, it all comes back to pure imagination. “When you make a live-action feature, well, mostly you cast humans, so we have all the same features, despite our race or gender. But the advantage of making stop motion and of having these puppets is that you can have an elephant and an insect speaking and interacting, so we really try to create that different scale and that difference in color, in texture. When we go to museums, and we see the sculptures, we would love them for them to move. We would love to see Degas’ ballerina moving and at the same time we would love some experimental piece to start moving around — or what would happen if a Van Gogh character could come out of the of the canvas? What would its texture be?” says Arturo.
“So, for us, making these kind of films is like an amazing experience.”
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