I think I have just seen my favorite animated movie of 2026. And it’s Julián, based on Jessica Love’s bestselling children’s book, Julián Is a Mermaid.
This year, cinemas have seen sequels for beloved IP like The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Toy Story 5, Minions & Monsters, Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, and PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie. There have also been original animal-centered adventures like GOAT, Hoppers, and Swapped. Plus, coming up are Shaun The Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, Forgotten Island, Wildwood, The Cat in the Hat, Steps, Ray Gunn, and Hexed.
So, what makes me so certain that Julián will be my favorite of the year? Well, for starters, it’s a deeply charming story about a child fighting for his individuality, a message that speaks to me. Created by Cartoon Saloon, which produced The Secret of Kells, Wolfwalkers, and The Breadwinner, it is absolutely beautiful. But most of all, over the course of 85 minutes, this magical movie’s style reminded me of some of my favorite animated movies and shows, including Steven Universe, Spirited Away, Craig of the Creek, and Luca. Yet at no point did Julián have me wishing I was watching those instead.
Julián thrives on comparison, not by being better than these rightly beloved films and series, but by being a solid stone in the path of the cathedral they collectively build to the glory of animation as an art form.
Julián is a summer-set story of LGBTQ+ youth and identity.
Named for its protagonist, Julián follows a little boy over a summer spent with his Dominican American abuela (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) in Brooklyn. He (Knyght Darius Jack) is a cheerful child with a vivid imagination, a love of the ocean, and little awareness of the mess he makes while playing. In the opening scene, his dad Javi (Anthony Sardinha) shows an appreciation for all of this, as Julián excitedly colors a picture, and splashes about glitter on the drive to New York. But his abuela hasn’t seen the boy in a while, and her parenting style is very “my way or the highway.” So, getting used to her rules will be an adjustment.
In the first act, Julián pulls a move from Paddington, trying hard to respect his host while making an absolute disaster of their bathroom. It’s the kind of childish shenanigans that are both adorable and deeply annoying. Director Louise Bagnall expertly shows Julián’s missteps as both, allowing the audience to understand him and his grandmother.
In the book (which is just 40 pages with illustrations), Julián’s abuela is almost instantly accepting of his desire to be a mermaid and what that entails. Expanding the story, Julián takes time to develop their relationship, working in new characters and obstacles for both to explore. For his part, Julián is giddy to meet a trio of local girls, who are plotting their “mersonas” in sidewalk chalk drawings and readying for Coney Island’s annual Mermaid Parade, where revelers dress in all sorts of nautical costumes for a day of festivities and community.
However, Abeula and her friends see Julián with the girls and heteronormatively assume he’s a “lady killer.” So, when Julián asks her to do his hair to show off to girls, he’s thinking of long braids, like one of the girls has. When he sees the short-cropped cut she’s done to “show off [his] handsome face,” the boy is reduced to tears.
There’s no point in this movie where Julián will come out as queer or discuss such labels with his loved ones. He’s just a kid, loving the things he loves and being told that’s wrong. After the tears over the haircut, after his insistence that the mermaid costume be colorful and covered in shimmer, Abuela understands who her grandson is. She decides she’ll sew him the costume he dreams of, but she also fears how others will react. In a moment of pique, she warns him about being “too much.” And so Julián is subjected to the stifling gender norms that are meant to protect him, but make him feel alone and ashamed.
However, like Julián Is a Mermaid (or Luca), this eponymous hero will find his happy ending, embraced by love, community, and family just as he is.
Julián is gorgeous and moving.
Bagnall creates a distinctive visual language for Julián that sets the film apart from Love’s book. Thankfully, she rejects the three-dimensional CGI animation that has become almost mandatory for theatrical release across the medium.
Where Julián Is a Mermaid had a painterly look of watercolors, Julián reflects its hero’s love of drawing by imitating the texture of markers and crayons. The colors are vibrant, showing the characters’ Afro-Latino neighborhood in Brooklyn as a place of life and warmth. The soft edges of the characters and their round, bouncy designs reflect Julián’s energy, which is like a Super Ball, high-soaring and playful. In sequences where the world transforms to reflect his imagination, watery fish fly, an aquatic goddess rises, and a whale shark with a belly made of stars soars with the boy mermaid. It’s in these moments of embracing play that I thought of Craig and his Creek friends. In the movement of the sea creatures, I thought of Spirited Away‘s sprites or Ponyo‘s fishy wonders.
Julián’s scenes of joy make moments where he is sad hit all the harder. This brilliant boy, whose nature is to sparkle, is (however briefly) urged to hide his light. The young voice actor’s choked-up performance had me spilling tears of my own. The animation, shifting from fluid, spirited dances to stilted shoving, as this kid literally locks his imaginary friend up in a jewelry box, had my heart aching.
But even if you haven’t read the book (I hadn’t), the love that infuses every frame of Julián assured me that it would get better for him. The world around him is too bright and full of pleasure to keep him locked up in shame or confusion. So, rather than a simple but beautiful tale of a little boy and his abuela who go to the Mermaid Parade together (as Love’s wonderful book is), Julián expands to be a thorough and thoughtful story of what it means to be different, misunderstood but still loved.
In the final act, rather than a gentle walk hand-in-hand to the Coney Island beach, Julián offers a rousing action sequence, as he runs away from home to join his friends at the parade. A race against time ratchets up tension, while his pursuing abuela is on a determined mission of her own, to mend what she fears she’s broken.
In this race, Bagnall showcases the wonder of the Mermaid Parade, with a cast of characters that could all be Crystal Gems. They have big, colorful hair in pinks, greens, blues, and magentas. Their bodies are varied, none from the same cookie cutter. And when the boy and his friends call upon strangers at the parade for help, it’s a trio of queer-coded mermaids (some with facial hair) who aid them kindly and easily. And here, I cried again — tears of joy for the recognition of what it means to find your community.
Where there are moments in Julián where the boy is faced with homophobia, the film overwhelmingly blooms with love. And I loved it right back.
Julián was reviewed out of its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
