Movie Review: HOLA FRIDA

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: August 8th, 2025 / 08:26 PM

HOLA FRIDA movie poster | ©2025 Level 33 Entertainment

Rating: Not Rated
Stars (voices): Layla Tuy-Sok, Gaëlle Serra, Oscar Vaillancourt, Lucinda Davis, Marcel Jeannin, Angela Galuppo, Holly Gauthier-Frankle
Writers: Anne Bryant, Sophie Faucher, Èmilie Gabrielle, André Kadi, based on FRIDA, C’EST MOI, text by Sophie Faucher, illustrated by Cara Carmina
Directors: Karine Vézina & André Kadi
Distributor: Level 33 Entertainment
Release Date: August 8, 2025

HOLA FRIDA is an animated family film that is upbeat, educational and aimed squarely at younger children. Parents can comfortably watch this with the SESAME STREET demographic. Older preteens and teens will likely be less enthusiastic.

Frida Kahlo, 1907-1954, remains one of Mexico’s most famous painters, known for her self-portraits and surrealism, as well as her independent spirit.

The film introduces us to Frida (voiced as an adult by Angela Galuppo), who uses but is not confined to a wheelchair, painting in her home studio. Surrounded by animals, Frida follows a mischievous monkey into a storeroom, where she finds her childhood notebook, full of sketches and writing.

Naturally, this prompts a reverie of when Frida first got the notebook at age six (voiced by Layla Tuy-Sok. She lives in Mexico City with her mother Matilde (voiced by Lucinda Davis), father Guillermo (voiced by Marcel Jeannin) and little sister Cristina (voiced by Gaëlle Serra).

Frida loves to draw and paint, though she plans on becoming a doctor. Her father and sister encourage her in everything; mom is loving but more cautious.

Then Frida comes down with polio. Confined to her room while she recovers, Frida imagines a friend who is a little taller and has orange irises in her eyes but otherwise looks just like her. She is also visited by La Muerte (voiced by Holly Gauthier-Frankle), the Spirit of Death, who wants Frida to come with her.

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that Frida lives, but she’s got to come to terms with having a right leg that doesn’t always do what she wants and schoolmates that tease her.

Based on the book FRIDA, C’EST MOI, written by Sophie Faucher and illustrated by Cara Carmina, the film HOLA FRIDA is so gentle-spirited that even La Muerte comes off as more maternally concerned than dangerous.

Directed by Karine Vézina & André Kadi from a screenplay by Anne Bryant, Faucher, Èmilie Gabrielle and Kadi, HOLA FRIDA has an unusual animation style. Characters have disproportionately big eyes, but they are not anime. In many shots, only a few elements will move, but the camera is always sliding and soaring, taking us through brightly-colored vistas that resemble children’s book illustrations.

The English-language version of HOLA FRIDA has a fair amount of Spanish in it, partly for authenticity, but also apparently partly in hopes that the context will allow viewers to pick up some of the vocabulary.

Indigenous sculpture and iconography loom large in Kahlo’s work, and so it does here. Young Frida gets a family/cultural history lesson from Matilde about their Zapotec heritage, we get an explanation (maybe not the true one) of why Frida started to favor men’s suits at a young age, and so on.

HOLA FRIDA is informative, agreeable and handsome. It just doesn’t go very deep. It does, however, end with archival footage of the real Kahlo, which provides a sense of her storied magnetism.

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