After an uphill battle that lasted 14 years, Mexican author Guillermo del Toro was finally able to share his dream project with the public such as the screening of Pinocchio (officially called “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”) at the BFI London Film Festival.
On stage before the premiere, del Toro spoke about his relationship to the story: “I saw the movie as a kid and it’s a movie that connected me with my mother all life. It affected me because Pinocchio saw the world the way I saw it. I was a little angry because people demand Pinocchio obedience so I wanted To make a movie about disobedience as a virtue, and to say you don’t have to change to be loved.”
The film’s young star, newcomer Gregory Mann, described the premiere – which coincides with his thirteenth birthday, a serendipitous fact that earned him a loving birthday carol from the audience – as “the best day of his life”.
While on stage, del Toro made a point to reinforce his and his team’s love for the skill of animation, “Everyone here thinks animation is not a genre. Animation is art. Animation is a movie.” The director was clearly emotional, warmly bidding farewell to the audience by honoring his late mother, who had died the day before the film’s world premiere: “I just want to say, my mother just passed away, and this was something very special for her and me. It’s not the first time she’s seen It’s just the movie, it’s the first time you’ve seen the movie with us. Thank you.”
Co-directed by Mark Gustafson (“The Fantastic Mr Fox”), the film took a whopping 1,000 days to produce, with a large group of animators working tirelessly to bring to life the director’s ambitious vision. The effort proved worth it as the audience laughed out loud and muted tears during the film’s first public screening on Saturday at the majestic Royal Festival Hall in London.
Pinocchio himself walked the red carpet for the BFI London Film Festival. Well, the Pinocchio doll used in the movie. The intricate model was placed on a small pedestal while the photographers squatted to take a picture of the miniatures. Other stars in attendance include Cate Blanchett, Christoph Waltz, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos – who sided with model Pinocchio – and composer Alexandre Deblatt, who reunited with the Mexican director for the first time since the 2017 Academy Award-winning drama “The Shape of Water.” “
Rescued from the hell of evolution by Netflix, del Toro takes Carlo Collodi’s classic 1883 book “The Adventures of Pinocchio” that puts the famous tale of a wooden doll who wanted to become a real boy against the bleak backdrop of Fascist Italy by Benito Mussolini. Man voices the titular character while a host of big names make up the rest of the cast, including Waltz, Blanchett, Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, and John Turturro.
miscellaneous Guy Lodge described Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio as “a rare children’s entertainment that is not afraid to confuse children so much as to charm them, down to a coda that induces a certain level of little existential meditation (not to mention sad tears or 2) into the concept of a dead insect in a matchbox coffin in the heart of A tad wooden—but so real—it’s a vivid, luxurious hit of whimsy, better seen than described.”
Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio” is one of several Netflix films arriving in London for this year’s festival – although it’s the club’s world premiere at the event. Other Netflix titles in the 2022 issue include Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s surreal examination of cultural displacement “Bardo: A False Record of a Set of Facts”, and “A Glass Onion: Knives Out of Obscurity” by Noah Baumbach. Novel “White Noise”.
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” will premiere in the US at AFI in November, followed by a limited theatrical release before hitting Netflix worldwide on December 5.
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