Julián Review: Cartoon Saloon’s Mermaid Story Brings Identity, Family and Dominican Culture to Life
1. The Film’s Basic Information
Julián is an animated feature based on Jessica Love’s acclaimed 2018 children’s book Julián Is a Mermaid. The film comes from Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon, the animation studio behind The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Wolfwalkers and The Breadwinner.
The film expands the story into Brooklyn’s Latino community and follows a seven-year-old boy whose fascination with mermaids becomes closely connected to questions of identity, family and belonging.
Julián runs for 85 minutes. Variety reviewed the film online on Sept. 11, 2026, following screenings at the Annecy Film Festival in the Annecy Presents section and the Toronto Film Festival, where it is part of the Centrepiece program.
Louise Bagnall directs the film, with Guillaume Lorin and Mark Mullery serving as co-directors. The screenplay is by Juliany Taveras and is based on Love’s original book.
Julián is an Ireland-Luxembourg-Canada-Denmark animated production, with Cartoon Saloon, Aircraft Pictures, Melusine Productions, Sun Creature and Guru Studio among the production companies involved. World sales are handled by New Europe Film Sales in Warsaw.
2. Julián and His Story
Julián is a seven-year-old boy who loves the ocean and mermaids. Knyght Darius Jack provides his voice.
He is an imaginative child who sees and creates sea creatures in his own imagination. In Brooklyn, he spends time with his Dominican American grandmother, Carmela, voiced by Milcania Diaz-Rojas.
His father, Javi, is voiced by Anthony Sardinha. Javi tells Carmela that Julián is somewhat different and asks her to show him some leniency.
The film does not give Julián a fixed label for his gender identity. Instead, his gender expression is presented before it has been fully shaped by society’s strict expectations around masculinity.
He likes colorful clothes and jewelry and wants to dress in his favorite mermaid costume. He also becomes friends with three girls from his neighborhood who are preparing for the Coney Island Mermaid Parade.
Julián wants to join them.
That desire sets up the film’s central conflict: a child simply wanting to express himself while adults and other children around him begin attaching expectations to what a boy is supposed to look and act like.
3. Grandmother Carmela and Dominican Heritage
Carmela is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who now lives in New York. She misses people from her homeland as well as its warm waters.
She is initially presented as a strict grandmother, but she also makes an effort to understand Julián’s interests. Her home reflects her Dominican background through small details, including the magnets on her refrigerator and the food she is accustomed to eating.
Julián, meanwhile, is less familiar with her household rules and food.
Milcania Diaz-Rojas voices Carmela in both English and Spanish, giving the character a connection to her Dominican background that extends beyond the film’s visual setting.
As the story progresses, Carmela gradually begins to understand Julián’s individuality. She eventually agrees to help him make his mermaid costume, although she remains concerned about how other people will view him.
At one point, she warns Julián about being “too much.”
Her relationship with Julián ultimately becomes one of the film’s emotional foundations. Rather than requiring him to change, Carmela comes to understand that his individuality is something she needs to accept.
4. The Social Pressure Julián Faces
Julián’s colorful mermaid costume attracts attention from some of Carmela’s gossiping friends. He also receives negative attention from other boys.
Carmela and her friends see Julián with the girls and jokingly assume that he is a “lady killer.” The expectations surrounding his appearance become more direct when Julián asks his grandmother to let his hair grow longer so that he can have a hairstyle resembling the girls’.
Instead, Carmela cuts his hair short so that his “handsome face” can be seen.
Julián cries.
The film repeatedly returns to his desire to keep his favorite mermaid costume colorful and covered in shimmer, while the people around him impose ideas about how he should look and behave.
Mashable described the film as a story connected to LGBTQ+ youth and identity. Importantly, Julián does not define himself with a queer label or formally “come out” to his family.
He simply likes things that other people consider inappropriate for him.
That distinction allows the story to focus on individuality rather than forcing Julián into a specific identity category. His challenge is to maintain that individuality while dealing with expectations imposed by the people around him.
5. Mermaid Parade and Community
The girls in Julián’s neighborhood are preparing to attend the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. They draw designs for their “mersonas” with sidewalk chalk as they get ready.
Julián eventually leaves home to join them.
The film’s final stretch turns into a race-against-time sequence as he attempts to reach the parade with his friends. Carmela follows him, trying to understand what she did wrong and why Julián left.
The Mermaid Parade introduces a colorful collection of characters, with pink, green, blue and magenta hair and a wide range of body types.
Julián and his friends ask strangers for help as they make their way toward the parade. Three queer-coded mermaids eventually help them, including characters with facial hair.
The sequence shifts the film’s focus toward community acceptance. The world that earlier seemed determined to tell Julián what he should be becomes a place where he can find people who recognize and accept his individuality.
6. Animation and Visual Style
Louise Bagnall directs Julián, marking her feature-film directorial debut. She was previously an Oscar nominee for the 2019 short film Late Afternoon.
Guillaume Lorin and Mark Mullery serve as co-directors.
The film’s visual style differs considerably from Jessica Love’s original book. Love’s book uses a painterly watercolor aesthetic, while the film adopts a more cartoonish approach with brighter, more saturated colors.
Rather than relying on a conventional 3D CGI appearance, the animation incorporates textures resembling markers and crayons. The result gives the film a hand-crafted visual quality while allowing its aquatic imagery to move with considerable fluidity.
Julián’s imagination is filled with fish and other aquatic creatures. One fish-like sphere becomes part of his imaginative world, while a sea goddess also appears.
That goddess is Yemayá, the Orisha deity. Julián learns about Yemayá from a kindhearted bodega owner.
Variety compared some of the film’s aquatic imagery with Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo. Mashable, meanwhile, noted visual echoes of works including Steven Universe, Spirited Away, Craig of the Creek and Luca.
The comparison is not that Julián copies those films or series. Instead, the animation uses different artistic approaches to create its own visual language.
One of Julián’s imaginative sequences features a whale shark with a star-like design across its belly. The movement of the water and sea creatures becomes one of the film’s visual highlights.
7. Cultural Authenticity and Creative Team
Cartoon Saloon made a number of creative decisions to establish the Dominican and Latino cultural setting with greater specificity.
The screenplay was written by Juliany Taveras and is based on Jessica Love’s Julián Is a Mermaid. According to Variety, Taveras identifies as a non-binary, queer, Afro/Indigenous Dominican American New Yorker.
The film uses both English and Spanish dialogue, with Carmela providing an important connection between Dominican heritage and immigrant life in New York.
Through Carmela, Julián also discovers a new connection to his own Dominican heritage.
Variety noted that Carmela challenges some stereotypes associated with Latino households. Rather than simply punishing Julián for his behavior, she listens to him and becomes willing to compromise.
The film therefore places its story of individuality inside a specific cultural and family setting rather than treating identity as an isolated issue.
8. Production Details
Julián is an Ireland-Luxembourg-Canada-Denmark animated production.
The production companies include Cartoon Saloon, Aircraft Pictures, Melusine Productions, Sun Creature, Guru Studio, Wychwood Media, Cinestar Pictures and BCP Asset Management, among others.
The producers are Nora Twomey, Tomm Moore, Paul Young, Anthony Leo, Andrew Rosen, Stephan Roelants, Fabien Renelli, Charlotte de la Gournerie and Lewis Taylor.
Executive producers include Zoe Saldaña, Mariel Saldaña, Cisley Saldaña, Gerry Shirren, Katja Schumann, David Yates, Yvonne Walcott-Yates, Hannah Goodier and John Gleeson.
Richie Cody and Owen Peters are the editors, while La-Nai Gabriel composed the music.
The voice cast includes Knyght Darius Jack, Milcania Diaz-Rojas, Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Naomi Diaz. The film features dialogue in both English and Spanish.
World sales are handled by New Europe Film Sales, Warsaw.
9. Main Points From Both Reviews
Variety viewed Julián as a vibrant animated adaptation whose central focus is the intergenerational relationship between Julián and his grandmother.
The film explores identity, individuality, family and community, while keeping love and acceptance at the center of its conflict.
Mashable described Julián as a family-friendly adventure built around individuality and community acceptance. Its reviewer called it their favorite animated movie of 2026, a personal assessment rather than a general critical consensus.
At 85 minutes, the film keeps its story relatively compact while moving between Julián’s imagination, his relationship with Carmela and the wider Brooklyn community.
Both reviews highlight the film’s visual style and Julián’s emotional journey.
Rather than pursuing an epic-scale fantasy, Julián places its emphasis on an urban Brooklyn setting, visual whimsy and the evolving relationship between a child and his grandmother.
The result is an animated coming-of-age story that connects personal expression with family, cultural heritage and the search for a community where individuality can be accepted.
