A Moving Family Story Told Through Animation

This week, critic Alejandro Riera explores how cinema can capture the absurdities of everyday life, transport us to fantastical worlds, and help us make sense of the past. His theatrical pick, Nicolás Pereda’s “Everything Else Is Noise,” finds comedy in an increasingly chaotic interview, while his streaming recommendation, the Mexican stop-motion feature “I Am Frankelda,” delivers a visually dazzling world of horror and fantasy.

The featured essay takes a more personal turn. Writing about William Caballero’s animated documentary “TheyDream,” ahead of its theatrical release, Alejandro reflects on family, grief, and the importance of preserving the voices and images of those we've lost.

Happy Watching,

— Vanessa

Fresh off its festival run in Morelia (where it won Best Director and Best Actress), New York and Chicago, Nicolás Pereda’s droll, sometimes low-key comedy takes place mostly in one setting: cellist and composer Tere’s (Teresita Sánchez) apartment, where a TV crew for a local public television station is interviewing friend and fellow cellist Rosa (Rosa Estela Juárez Vargas). The interview starts on the wrong foot and gets worse as they contend with power outages, barking dogs, and the crew’s sudden realization that Tere was once the lover of a renowned orchestra director. This minimalist wonder unpacks many ideas in an economical 71 minutes while poking fun at intellectual pretentiousness.

Playing at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago on November 15.

This first feature-length stop-motion from Mexico, written and directed by Arturo and Roy Ambriz and with the years-long mentorship of Guillermo Del Toro, is so packed with visual wonders that you may feel overwhelmed. This prequel to the HBO miniseries “Frankelda's Book of Spooks” tells the story of how the titular character, a gifted young writer of horror and fantasy stories dismissed by a local publisher because women shouldn’t be writing horror stories, becomes the custodian of anything and everything that goes bump in the night in the mythical realm of Topus Terrenus. Word of warning: You will want to hit replay after the musical number “Prince of Spooks.”

Streaming on Netflix.

— By Alejandro Riera

One line in William Caballero’s deeply emotional documentary feature “TheyDream” hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. It comes from Milly, Caballero’s mother, in reference to the close family members they’ve lost in the span of almost a decade: “You miss them when you hear the voices.”

My sister passed away five years ago after a long fight with cancer complicated by COVID (a maskless client had infected her, two doctors and several technicians at the veterinary clinic she worked for in Jacksonville, Florida). She was vaccinated — at the time, the government had yet to approve the second and even third dose — but was left without chemo for 25 days because, as a cancer patient, her quarantine was longer than that imposed on the rest of the population. And even though I have many photos of her, I wish, I really really wish, I had brought my microcassette recorder with me the many times I visited my parents in Puerto Rico and later in Florida to record her voice. For Milly is right: their voices, their moving images on a video, bring them back to life.