‘I Am Frankelda’ Interview: Directors Arturo and Roy Ambriz

‘I Am Frankelda’ will premiere on Netflix June 12th. Photo: Netflix.

Premiering on Netflix June 12th is the new stop-motion animated musical ‘I Am Frankelda’, which was written and directed by Arturo and Roy Ambriz, and is a prequel to the TV series ‘Frankelda’s Book of Spooks’.

“What you imagine has long been imagining you.”

Release Date: Jun 12, 2026

Run Time: 1 hr 44 min

‘I Am Frankelda’ is the first independently made Mexican stop-motion film ever made and Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (‘Pinocchio’) served as a mentor figure on the project.

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with sibling directors Arturo and Roy Ambriz about their work on ‘I Am Frankelda’. The brothers discussed developing the screenplay, writing an origin story, the stop-motion animation process, how they work together as directors on set, their relationship with Guillermo del Toro, the music, and their partnership with Netflix.

Related Article: Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro Talks ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’

(L to R) ‘I Am Frankelda’ directors Roy and Arturo Ambriz.

Moviefone: To begin with, Arturo, can you talk about developing this project and did you always intend for it to be a film?

Arturo Ambriz: First, we created a series for HBO Max Latin America, which did well in Mexico. After the series finished, Cartoon Network wanted to continue with the character, so they thought that it was good to make a 30-minute special. We started developing that, but very soon we realized that the story we wanted to tell couldn’t fit in those 30 minutes. So, we spoke with them, and they let us develop it as a feature film, if we would find the funding for the rest of it. We got some loans and a mortgage on our family house, and we started producing it, and since then it grew a lot. We realized it had a lot of world building characters, and it became a very organic process in which we developed and produced what the film needed to be. So, it was an interesting experiment of producing animation.

MF: Roy, this film is really a prequel to the series, did you always know Frankelda’s origin story or was that specifically developed for this movie?

Roy Ambriz: No, we hadn’t written since we did the series. We had some fights because Arturo wanted to go faster, and I said, “No. We must work the whole background first, because what will happen if there’s a film in the future?” So, I’m glad that I really pushed that, because when we started writing, we didn’t have all the details. But we had thought of a lot of that backstory, and that helped us make everything match. I’s wonderful because we both love mythology, so we thought of this story as a myth, and we grabbed different elements from different stories and different mythologies to make a new Mexican one.

‘I Am Frankelda’ will premiere on Netflix June 12th. Photo: Netflix.

MF: Roy, did you discover anything new about these characters during the writing process?

RA: I think that one of the most impressive elements for me when we were writing the script was the outcome of Herneval. I don’t want to give a lot of spoilers, but what happens to him was not planned. When we were writing, we went to that point, and it was inevitable for it to happen. There was no other choice. It had to happen that way. We tried to find other outcomes for him, but they didn’t work. So, I think that was magical, because it was like the story writing itself and the story just using us as mediums to exist, so that was a powerful feeling for me.

MF: Arturo, I know that the stop-motion animation process is very time consuming and very difficult to achieve. Can you talk about that and why you love it so much?

AA: Well, it is time-consuming. On a good day, an animator could produce two or three seconds of animated film. What we must do, and it’s the same thing that most stop-motion production companies do, is that you have a lot of stages at the same time. So, one animator is working on a scene which may appear at the beginning of the film, and next to them it’s another stage where they are animating probably the last shot of the film, the closing shot. So, you as a director must be present at every moment and have a full understanding of the rhythm and the structure of the story to provide insightful remarks and direction to the rest of the crew. We love this process because we really love physical objects. We love art, we love painting, we love sculpture, we love dance, and we love light, so it is a mixture of everything we enjoy doing. Being on a stop-motion set is extremely fun because you see animation happening before your eyes, even though it’s very slow, you still can appreciate the characters and their environments.

Guillermo del Toro poses backstage with the Oscar® for Animated Feature Film during the live ABC telecast of the 95th Oscars® at Dolby® Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on Sunday, March 12, 2023.

MF: Roy, can you talk about how director Guillermo del Toro mentored you through this project, and was there any one piece of advice that he gave you that really resonated with you?

RA: There were tons of advice that he gave us. It was wonderful to work with him. He helped us just out of friendship, because at that time he couldn’t be involved in an official way. But he called us daily because we were worried. When we finished the film, we had a lot of debts, and we had no idea how to sell it. We had no distribution in Mexico. We didn’t even have the international distribution, and he was worried too. He was finishing ‘Frankenstein’, and he was telling us daily, “I am more worried about you than my own film.” So, he called us daily just to see how we were and give us words of encouragement to keep going. He helped us a lot. He taught us how to get distribution, how to speak to agents, how to speak to a big corporate apparatus, and he taught us how to refine our storytelling as directors. We re-edited the film because of his advice, but he didn’t do it for us. He just showed us the way, and he told us, “You have to do it all by yourself or you are not going to learn, and you are not going to be able to survive in this medium.” So, it was a fantastic experience and we are really grateful with him, and he is one of the most wonderful human beings in this world.

MF: Arturo, can you talk about your process of working with your brother and how you split up the directing duties between the two of you on set?

AA: We are always together at the beginning of a film or of a project. We are both writers and we love to create the concepts together, the initial concept art. But then we separate a little bit because Roy is more focused on construction, design, sculpture, everything visual, of course, and I go a little bit more into the photography part on the set, but all the time we are speaking and trying to find the best solution to the problems. Our personal deal is that the best idea wins, whoever provided it, so it’s never him against me. It’s an idea battling out against other idea, and the best one wins. Once both of us are 100% on an idea, we communicate it to the rest of the team.

‘I Am Frankelda’ will premiere on Netflix June 12th. Photo: Netflix.

MF: Arturo, can you talk about creating the music for the film?

AA: The score and the songs are amazing. We’re very thankful with the whole team because of that. Kevin Smithers is the composer, and the three of us, Kevin, Roy, and I, wrote the lyrics. So, it really helps us to have this balance between moments that are a bit more realistic and other parts that are more poetic, and we get to experience different aspects of our characters and the way they interact through speaking or through song. We grew up in the ’90s watching all those animated musicals, most of them by Disney or DreamWorks, so we really wanted to bring that to modern audiences with a weird movie such as this.

MF: Finally, Roy, can you talk about your partnership with Netflix and what it means to you that millions of people around the world will have the opportunity to see your film?

RA: It’s a dream. For us being here at Netflix right now it’s a dream. It has been difficult, and it has been rough to do this kind of work alone back in Mexico, where even though we work with different corporations, they always have so little money because it’s a Latin America branch. So now to be helped by Netflix and by all these wonderful producers, it’s a dream. We feel at home. It’s our first film and it’s distributed by Netflix, so it’s fun.

‘I Am Frankelda’ will premiere on Netflix June 12th. Photo: Netflix.