My next movie at Fantastic Fest 2026 was Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña’s Donkey Princess (Chile / France / Netherlands / Uruguay / Germany) and I think I love it. Princess Diana (Antonia Giesen) grows up in a fairy tale world with her mother the Queen (Victoria Giesen) and her father the King (Francisco Melo). A plague hits the unfortunate Kingdom of Chile and Diana’s mother dies. Her father is heartbroken. Determined to protect Diana and his subjects from feeling the pain of heartbreak, the king issues a decree declaring that love is a plague. He orders anyone exhibiting symptoms of love to be banished to the Valley of Thorns. But hearts cannot be protected from love—not someone else’s heart and not your own. Diana falls in love with a newly arrived stranger, Lalo (Andrew Bargsted), who gives her a bracelet that grants wishes. The lovers are caught and Lalo is banished. Diana, uses the bracelet and travels to many places, times, and even genres to rediscover her love.

Donkey Princess is a thoughtful fairy tale about the dangers of love, wishes, loss and letting go. Like many such stories, it is not suitable for small children—unless your small children love Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay as well as Shelley Duvall’s Fairy Tale Theatre, Jim Henson’s Storyteller and contemporary dramas about relationship issues and elder care. There is some horror and gore beyond the existential horror so many fairy tales (and dramas) illustrate.

It’s also a film that embraces the handcrafted. It reaches for truths about love, loss, and letting go by means of fairy tale and artifice. There are live actors, puppets, stop-motion, 2D and 3D animation, painted backdrops, and miniatures that recall the stylized miniatures of both Expressionist filmmaking and Czech animation. Like so many other fairy tales, Princess Donkey is filled with delight, comedy, horror and many, many wonders. And I am still thinking about it, because the film itself seems like the kind of complicated wish the bracelet grants taking us to places, to our desires and fears given form, but only in another kingdom and another time.

Read more at Monstrous Industry.