What is the film about?

Dolores is seven. She only wants to play. Running from a fire demon, she falls into a grave, where two sinister corn husk skulls are waiting for a new playmate, one who would stay with them forever. Only a curious armadillo stands between her and eternity underground.

What influenced it?

The story was inspired by the tumbas de tiro, the pre-Hispanic shaft tombs of western Mexico. Dolores falls into one of them. The two skulls she meets there stand, in the director’s words, for the girls Dolores drags into the cornfield at the start of the film.

Andalón Delgadillo shot DOLORES at El Taller del Chucho in Guadalajara, the stop-motion studio behind Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which stands on a shaft tomb zone itself, with remains very probably still lying underneath the stages.

The film’s underworld is built entirely from that heritage. The two skulls are made of corn husk, the material of the Mexican countryside. The armadillo, Dolores’ only ally, was a deity associated with death in pre-Hispanic western cultures, an animal of darkness and underground burrows, protected by its own shell.

A little background information...

Extracts from an interview with Cédric Lépine, Mediapart, July 2024, translated from Spanish (courtesy of MIYU)

On how the project started:

DOLORES came to me during the lockdown, in the middle of the uncertainty about what would happen next. Being shut in is what gave me the moment to start the story, and, encouraged by my husband, Dolores began, as a kind of collage of elements that are appealing and important to me. I wanted to put Mexicanness into my work, and a fantastical world with a somewhat sombre tone.

On the starting point:

Not exactly a legend, but I did take up the tumbas de tiro, which are funerary chambers dating from the pre-Hispanic era of western Mexico, and my main character falls into one. Something meaningful to me was shooting at El Taller del Chucho, which is a shaft tomb zone, and there are very probably remains underneath.

On stop motion:

Everything that has to do with the visual. I love seeing the world represented in miniature and coming alive through animation.

-Cecilia Andalón Delgadillo

How was the film made?

Developed during the pandemic lockdown, DOLORES took two years to make and brought together a team of more than fifty people, many of them coming straight off Pinocchio, alongside others taking their first steps in stop motion. 

Production ran at El Taller del Chucho, with post-production at Universidad UNIVA and the score was recorded at ITESO, making the film a genuinely Guadalajaran object from end to end.

Among her influences, Andalón Delgadillo cites the creative freedom of Jan Švankmajer and Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max, alongside a strand of Mexican cinema running from Carlos Carrera’s El Héroe to Veneno para hadas and Perfume de violetas.

Since its premiere at the 39th Guadalajara International Film Festival, DOLORES has been selected in more than 80 festivals worldwide. 

The film has found a place both at genre festivals, including Sitges, BIFFF Brussels, Screamfest and Mexico’s Mórbido Fest, and at festivals for younger audiences, from the New York International Children’s Film Festival to BUFF Malmö, which is rare for a children’s film. 

It won Best Animated Short Film at the Taxco Film Fest and was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 2025 Ariel Awards, Mexico’s national film awards.