Margarita
2009 · 14m · España
Directed by Álex Cervantes
Genres: animation, family, fantasy
Tones: mythic, tender, whimsical
In traditional animation based on Rubén Darío's poem 'A Margarita Debayle', a young princess longs to capture a star, in an ode to bravery and to pursuing our dreams.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A princess chasing stars—it's exactly the kind of earnest fairy-tale sentiment that usually puts me to sleep, and Cervantes knows it, which is maybe the only interesting thing here; the poem adaptation feels too reverent to the source material to push back against anything.
Cervantes's fidelity to Darío's modernist verse—treating animation as a visual complement to literary tradition rather than spectacle—positions this squarely in a lineage of poetic animation that respects both image and text; the restraint in the formal choices is what makes it work.
The decision to animate in a mode that prioritizes the poem's rhythm over visual dynamism—letting white space and negative space do the work that cheaper productions would fill with motion—gives the 14 minutes an almost stained-glass stillness that feels rare and deliberate.