Frida (2024)

Making art come alive

Jun 25, 2025

This is an essay about the 2024 documentary Frida. You can read my essay on the 2002 Salma Hayek film Frida here.

Even if you don’t know Frida Kahlo’s art, you almost certainly know her face. Her strong stare and iconic unibrow are not just the focal point of many of her paintings. The visage of this disabled, queer, feminist icon can be found on children’s books, tea towels and a wide range of Sass & Belle ceramic products. We have seen plenty of Frida Kahlo, and now, thanks to this documentary narrated almost entirely with words from her personal diary and letters, we can hear from her too.

Content warning: this essay includes references to traumatic injury, suicide and miscarriage

Film Details

Director: Carla Gutiérrez

Genres: Documentary

Theatrical Release Date: Jan. 2024 (USA)

Country and Language: USA, Spanish

Running time: 1hr 27min

Watch Frida Trailer

Setting the scene

I think it’s important to establish early on here that I know very little about art. My two favourite artworks are in the Tate Modern in London. They are this photograph of a porch and Babel, a huge tower of radios all playing different stations at the same time. I can’t explain why I like them or what makes them good (though it’s probably some kind of weird brain chemistry thing as, despite the Babel artist’s intention to reflect the incomprehensible ‘noise’ of the modern world, I once calmly sat in there for half an hour and wrote a short story). All I know is that when I look at them, I feel something, and it’s that experience of feeling something in art that is so creatively communicated in Carla Gutiérrez’s Frida.

Gutiérrez first discovered the work of Frida Kahlo through the painting Self-portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States (1932) when she was 19, shortly after she had arrived in America from Peru. She felt a resonance between her current feelings of displacement and the art, which expressed Kahlo’s own experience as a Mexican woman during her time in America1. Gutiérrez found Kahlo’s art was there for her through other milestones in her life, including helping her navigate the tumultuous and rarely talked about emotions of losing a pregnancy, which Kahlo viscerally depicts in Henry Ford Hospital (1932)2.

“Frida’s art explores themes of female empowerment, motherhood, disability, obsessive love, gender fluidity, pain, and loss. I’d like the film to reach people who connect with these themes and anyone who finds inspiration and solace in art.”

Carla Gutiérrez interview with the Sundance Institute

To make these themes hit hard and truly communicate the vibrancy and depth of Kahlo’s art, Gutiérrez knew she wanted to do two things. She wanted the paintings to come alive, and she wanted Frida to tell you about them in her own words3.

*Self-portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States (1932)* and *Henry Ford Hospital (1932)*

The voice of Frida Kahlo

In the research process for Frida, Gutiérrez and her producers theorise that they compiled the most extensive collection of Kahlo’s writings to date4. They consulted with Hayden Herrera, the renowned biographer of Kahlo, combing through boxes of archival material Herrera had in her attic and spent laborious hours liaising with museums5. Initially they thought additional narration or significant supplementary material from other figures in Kahlo’s life may be needed to fill the documentary, but it soon became evident that Frida Kahlo could candidly speak about everything herself6.

Kahlo only began her illustrated diary later in life, but she used it to reflect back to her childhood. Born in Coyoacán, Mexico in 1907, she was rebellious and headstrong from a young age, recounting that as a child she asked her religious leaders if the Virgin Mary was really a virgin and did other frowned-upon activities for women of the time, like dressing in a suit for family pictures7. In her late teens she was impaled through the pelvis by a metal rod in a trolley accident, which would lead to lifelong pain and numerous surgeries.

A 17-year old Frida Kahlo poses for a family photo wearing a traditional gentleman's 3-piece suit, 1924. : r/OldSchoolCool — Frida Kahlo (middle) poses for a family photo in a suit

During her initial recovery, bedridden in a full body cast, she took to painting self-portraits and pictures of friends and family. Once recovered, she showed her art to the famous muralist (and womaniser and communist) Diego Rivera, whom she would go on to marry, divorce, and then marry again8. The documentary gives a much better summation of Kahlo’s life than I can, but some highlights include9:

An affair with Leon Trotsky10
Going to America and finding everyone in the high-society world incredibly boring and shallow
An affair with Ignacio Aguirre
Being commissioned to do a memorial portrait of Dorothy Hale for her mother after Hale lost her life to suicide. Instead of painting a portrait of Hale in life, Kahlo painted her graphic suicide and sent it to Hale’s mother. Didn’t go down well11.
An affair with Georgia O’Keeffe

Frida navigates these points in Kahlo’s life and beyond, using an actor with a wisened, alluringly intense voice to narrate words from Kahlo’s diary and letters in Spanish12.

There is obviously some construction here. Documentary isn’t immune from creative interpretation, and no life or event exists in a neat, three-act structure that we can tell without editorialising. The narration is an intentional curation of Kahlo’s words, though care was taken not to remove anything too far from its intended context13. The adoration Gutiérrez has for the work of Kahlo and the inspiration she has found in her art comes across in the documentary, but that isn’t a bad thing. It’s both an informative summation of Kahlo’s life and also a tribute to someone the director and many others look up to, which gives meaning to the biographical detail.

“Throughout history, women have been contained by societal pressures that have then forced us to contain ourselves. Frida’s spirit was uncontainable. Her heart bled freely onto her canvases. With this film, I hope to inspire people that letting one’s voice out, loudly, is a good thing”

Carla Gutiérrez interview with the Sundance Institute

Despite the fact that Kahlo was only fully recognised for her talents after her death, the documentary does not portray her as a struggling, meek artist. The details selected from Kahlo’s writings depict someone staunchly committed to an uncompromising artistic vision that reflected her life, love and pain unflinchingly. Her paintings now sell for millions, and this documentary literally brings them to life.

Making art come alive

It’s very easy for documentaries using archival footage to be boring. Funky transitions, panning and zooming can only do so much to add zest to still photographs and paintings. Gutiérrez wanted to allow viewers to “visually jump into [Kahlo’s] heart and swim into her internal world”14, so from early in the production process it was decided that Kahlo’s paintings would be animated.

Legally the animators couldn’t add details to the paintings that weren’t already there15, but Gutiérrez’s intention was always to emphasise the existing work rather than alter the details. Some animations are subtle, adding a shimmer to clothing or a slight tilt of the head to give the works a palpable heartbeat. Others are integrated with the story, such as the visual of a column splitting and crumbling before being overlaid with Kahlo’s torso to form her painting The Broken Column (1944), soundtracked by the story of her horrific road accident.

Frida Kahlo - The Broken Column - A3 29.7x42cm QUALITY Art Canvas Print Unframed | eBay UK — *The Broken Column (1944)* is animated in the film as Frida describes her accident- *‘‘It wasn’t violent but silent. Slow. The handrail went through me like a sword through a bull”*

The film also adds colour to black-and-white archival footage and images at various points. Sometimes this is wisps of colour to mirror a playful, creative energy in Kahlo’s words. Sometimes it’s to add an extra layer of meaning to a point in the narrative, such as when colour bleeds into a still photo of Kahlo lying on the grass, reddening her lips as she begins to talk about what love, romance and sex mean to her.

Love, sex, romance and Frida

“An affair lasts as long as it gives pleasure”

Frida Kahlo

Kahlo wrote fervently about her romantic and sexual life. She wrote doting and passionate letters to her lovers, and her diary expresses the pleasure and tumult these passions sometimes led to. Gutiérrez speaks in interviews about how important it was for this to be depicted in the film, emphasising that she was a confident, sexual being from her teenage years and through her life as a disabled woman16. The depiction is celebratory and honouring of the way Kahlo unapologetically lived and expressed her desires, which Gutiérrez found inspiring as someone from a Catholic background where conversations about sex (particularly sex for women) were shamed right out of you.

“Frida never really talks about her queerness, she just lives it…she was very, very public about it”.17

Where the 2002 film Frida chose to structure Kahlo’s story around her relationship with Rivera, this Frida makes Kahlo a more central, individual figure. Her relationship with Rivera is still important, but the film has a strong backbone of Kahlo’s voice, beliefs and desires that allows for a more complex exploration of her relationships. While Rivera and Kahlo had a fairly open relationship, Gutiérrez wanted to avoid falling into the common narrative of that always being an equitable or respectful arrangement between them. Rivera accepted Kahlo’s affairs with women but struggled to agree with her affairs with men. Kahlo at times felt insulted by and jealous of Rivera’s affairs, and clearly a big boundary was crossed when Rivera slept with Kahlo’s sister, which led to the end of their first marriage18. At the same time, the two had a great love and professional respect for each other that lasted throughout their lives.

These layers may only be achievable in a documentary where you don’t need to fully reconcile what may be seen as contradictions for the purpose of a storyline. It allows Kahlo’s sexuality to just exist as part of her wider being without leering eyes (see: Weinstein’s involvement in Frida 2002) or expositional speeches that might stifle a fictionalised narrative. The documentary format allows Frida Kahlo and her sexuality to exist with minimal explanation because a good documentary of this type isn’t trying to make sense of the world for you. It shows you what exists beyond your idea of the world.

Final thoughts

Readers of my other film essays will likely know by now that I am not one for deifying individuals. We are all too messy to be heroes, but I don’t feel that’s what Frida is going for. Gutiérrez isn’t telling you why Kahlo is an untouchable saint; she is telling you why Kahlo has been important to her and others. It’s a subtle distinction, but it makes all the difference. Her determination to make the film in Spanish, as well as the dedication to bringing in talent from Mexico for the production19, also speaks to her ability to know what is truly important for this story to be told meaningfully20.

Of course it doesn’t touch every part of Kahlo’s life (such as her fixation on Stalin in her later days21) but it’s a great introduction. Reviews have been split on the approach to animating Kahlo’s paintings22, but as someone who has a limited artistic knowledge, I found the animations helped communicate the experience of feeling something when you look at art that resonates with you. It gave the paintings a vibrancy that I hadn’t been able to connect with before, and I am all for a creative approach to visual storytelling in documentary (anyone who is putting in the work to avoid re-enactments is an angel in my eyes).

I leave you with the wise words of Frida Kahlo, written towards the end of her affair with Leon Trotsky:

“I’m so tired of this old man”

If you want more Kahlo content, you can check out my essay on Salma Hayek, Harvey Weinstein and the 2002 film Frida.

Let’s do this together

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Frida (2024)

Making art come alive

Film Details

Setting the scene

The voice of Frida Kahlo

Making art come alive

Love, sex, romance and Frida

Final thoughts

Let’s do this together

Discussion about this post