{Fantastic Fest 2026} Donkey Princess (2026) A Fairy Tale That Refuses Definition – Signal Horizon
Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña, the Chilean duo behind The Wolf House, have made their most narrative-driven film yet with Donkey Princess, a loose, shape-shifting reimagining of Charles Perrault’s Donkeyskin, the same 17th-century fairy tale Jacques Demy famously adapted decades ago. Princess Diana (Antonia Giesen) defies a royal ban on love to be with Lalo, and when he’s exiled, she uses a magical bracelet to chase him across parallel space-times, and the film mutates right along with her, hopping from a classic fairy-tale realm into a domestic thriller, boarding a 1960s TV-style spaceship, and eventually descending into the stark, unsettling horror of physical reality itself.
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Here’s the thing that struck me almost immediately. The color palette shifts scene to scene almost like Snowpiercer, each new world getting its own fully committed visual identity rather than just a coat of paint slapped over the same production design. Given that León and Cociña built this entire multidimensional universe by hand, using rear-projected scale models, hand-drawn illustrations, and painted backdrops constructed live inside an open gallery space in front of an actual audience, that level of ambition tracks completely. This isn’t a film assembled after the fact in a computer. It was built, physically, in real time, and you can feel that tactile process in every frame.
The tracking shots gliding through the miniature settings are genuinely gorgeous, unhurried in a way that lets you actually appreciate the craftsmanship rather than rushing past it, and the whimsical animation sequences woven throughout look almost rotoscoped, sharp enough that Disney should probably be a little worried about the competition. I mean that as a real compliment. I’d happily watch an entire slate of dark, handmade princess movies built with this much care and this little interest in playing it safe.
There’s clear Guillermo del Toro DNA running through the imagery here, filtered through a specifically Donkeyskin lens rather than del Toro’s usual fascist-Spain or Victorian gothic playgrounds, and the film leans into a genuinely psychedelic combination of shadow and animation that’s remarkably effective at disorienting you in exactly the right ways. It’s clever enough to shoot itself in both an absurdist and a realist register simultaneously, somehow, and it never once stops feeling like a fairy tale even as it wanders into some genuinely strange, adult territory. There’s a lovely little sequence built entirely around rain, all animated raindrops falling in this hand-crafted world, that’s just pure, uncomplicated joy to watch unfold.
This clearly must have been an absolute blast to make, and that spirit comes through in the film’s surprising emotional depth too, particularly around parenthood. Donkey Princess handles its themes in a wonderfully surreal, almost It’s a Wonderful Life kind of way that caught me off guard given everything else going on visually. The costume design matches the film’s visual ambition step for step, equally sharp and equally committed to the bit, whatever genre the story happens to be inhabiting at that particular moment.
Where the film loses some steam is in a back half that leans a little too hard into parallel universe mechanics at the end. There are a handful off false endings that make the journey run a bit long by the time it reaches its actual conclusion. There’s a point where the film’s commitment to genre-hopping starts to feel less like a structural choice and more like a director who can’t quite bear to leave any idea on the cutting room floor. But even with that stumble, there’s real staying power in watching a story this old being told this strangely and this lovingly, and sitting with it at Fantastic Fest felt like a genuine gift, the kind of discovery that makes FF so important to independent cinema.
Donkey Princess makes its North American Premiere at Fantastic Fest on Saturday, September 19 at 11am at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, with a second screening Thursday, September 24 at 5:15pm. Seek this one out if handmade, genre-bending fantasy is your thing, because there’s genuinely nothing else at the festival quite like it this year. Tickets and the full schedule are at fantasticfest.com/film-guide.
Tyler has been the editor in chief of Signal Horizon since its conception. He is also the Director of Monsters 101 at Truman State University a class that pairs horror movie criticism with survival skills to help middle and high school students learn critical thinking. When he is not watching, teaching or thinking about horror he is the Director of Debate and Forensics at a high school in Kansas City, Missouri.