"Pan's Labyrinth" by Guillermo del Toro

January 25, 2007

Right at the end of this year's Cannes Film Festival was a film which went almost completely unnoticed by German-language critics; in years to come, it will certainly be considered one of the masterworks of the decade.

Guillermo del Toro’s inimitable linking of genre cinema and political awareness, special-effects laden fables and reflections on recent history are central elements in the 42-year-old Mexican director’s work – e.g. Cronos (1994), El Espinazo del Diablo (2001) and Hellboy (2004).
 
His newest work, El laberinto del fauno/Pan's Labyrinth, a US co-production with Mexico and Spain, tells the story of a young girl who arrives in rural Northern Spain in 1944 after Franco has seized power.

The girl's adoptive father, a Fascist police colonel, begins a brutal persecution of the last resistance fighters who are hiding out in the woods. Against the backdrop of these events, the girl invents a fantasy world in which imaginary creatures become wrapped up with concrete political realities.