Guillermo del Toro navigates one beauty another in 2022

Monica Rubalcava

Mexico City, January 29 (EFE). Mexican filmmaker Guillerno del Toro is experiencing an intense 2022 as he seeks to enhance, if possible, his original and versatile footprint in the audiovisual field with long-awaited projects such as “Pinocchio” and “Cabinet of Curiosities,” both for Netflix.

“He says the film is not independent, it is part of a whole work, the film seems to be all films. And I think that with ‘Pinocchio’ we will see another film that will be part of the mechanism of his speech: that of others, the look of the other,” said film critic, journalist and educator Gerardo Gil to EFE in an interview.

Inspired by Carlo Collodi’s story, the film will have audiences eager for the Mexican’s work waiting until its ‘streaming’ premiere at the end of the year.

However, the recent premiere of his “Nightmare Alley” has already provided enough material for people not to stop talking about it for too long, as the work has garnered mixed reviews and is currently heading towards the next batch of Academy Awards.

“It seems to me that he is clearly a very mature director with his own idea of cinema, but in addition to being a great director, he is a fan of films and this show,” admits Gil, who considers that del Toro has changed the literal brutality of his characters from other, less obvious, more films psyche in this movie.

But if waiting for “Pinocchio” was not enough, then the project of the series “Cabinet of Curiosities” also keeps his fans waiting, because it is another ambitious project that the director is already working on.

This series brings together the undoubted talent of several filmmakers of different nationalities, to tell stories of unitary fantasy and horror, the entirety of which is based on the organization he carried out in his monolithic book published in 2013.

In this project, Del Toro will present each episode, and in addition to being the project manager, he is the author of some stories.

In addition to this, she also produces titles such as “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 2” or “Haunted Mansion”.

“On every project he tackles, no matter which managers direct him, his hand is noticeable,” Gill explains.

“Specifically in the ‘Cabinet’ series I think it will include this reference to the Del Toro cinema, and I think the fact that his name is behind it will give the project an indisputable quality well above the usual productions, in the gold time on television by ‘streaming,’ the expert considers .

Mexico’s most committed film maker

Guillermo gained affection not only from his followers but from his entire country thanks to his prevailing critical view of the country’s grievances and the impetus he sought to generate in Mexican cinema through scholarships and student support.

An example of this is the founding of the International Center for Animation, also known as “El Taller de Chucho (dog)” at the University of Guadalajara, and its decision to turn this space into a second location to portray a project as important and personal to him as “Pinocchio”.

This workshop gave the opportunity for local, experienced and emerging talents to be present in the processes involving the most advanced technologies in terms of “stop motion”.

“The infrastructure was provided to make a small part of the film, it’s a few minutes, but after this experience was trained in techniques and ways of working that were not very well known to many of us who make films in Mexico,” one of them said to Efe. Collaborating filmmakers, Rita Basulto.

Rita remembers watching a talk by the director when she was a student, in which he warned the students that it would be difficult to devote oneself to cinema.

After some time, del Toro came across Basulto’s first short film and he was calling her with the intention of supporting her project.

In some editions of the Morelia Film Festival, Gil sees the patience with which the director will review the script of the young man who asked him what he thinks of his work.

Nor can we forget the time when del Toro, in the face of the indifference of the present government, offered to pay for the flights of two young Mexicans who were competing in the Mathematical Olympiads in South Africa, to sum up some of his altruistic acts alone.

“Amid the general rot and hypocrisy of official discourse and the young people with homes in the United States, Guillermo del Toro is a part of this Mexico that one should be proud of,” concludes Gill. EFE

mrl / esc / amg

(Photo)