“That’s what surprised us, is that she could really, really carry this story. We thought we were going to [rely] on other people’s voices more, and then she just kept kind of like, pushing the other voices away… like, OK, Frida wants to talk. So Frida talks!” 

As such, FRIDA begins with a promise: “Frida Kahlo left a rich testimony of her life in letters, writings, and her illustrated diary. These are her words.” And with that, we are invited to join the bejeweled, independent-thinking Kahlo as she exposes herself, inside and out, through her paintings — her longings and losses revealed in a beating heart; her anguish presented in facial expressions of anger and sorrow. After being badly injured in a bus crash, she spends months bedbound in the hospital, and painting becomes her vessel for self-expression. She paints herself because that is what she knows. Never, she vows, will she paint for glory. 

As much as FRIDA is a story about the surrealist painter and her art, it also explores in vivid color Kahlo’s relationships with others. Her rebellious adventures with young men. Her expansive sexual life and romantic interludes. Her tender and tumultuous relationship with famed mural artist Diego Rivera. And her candid, profanity-laced comments about stupid rich people who speak nonsense and don’t buy her paintings.  

Throughout it all, the pain from her accident would remain. But the pleasure from her painting would sustain her. As she shares in her writings, “Who would have thought that stains of color can come to life? And that they can help one live?”