Guillermo Del Toro wins the Oscar for best animated film for his ‘Pinocchio’ | Oscars | Cinema | The USA Print

Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro won the Oscar for best animated film on Sunday. The Mexican director thus obtained the third statuette of his career. He did it with what he himself has called one of his most personal works. Based on a literary classic, which he transferred to Italy during fascism, it has allowed him to delve into some of the themes that he has touched on in his films, such as the relationship between parents and children. After making a name for himself in Hollywood as the master of monsters, the filmmaker has established himself thanks to the most famous wooden puppet in cinema.

Del Toro’s (Guadalajara, Mexico, 58 years old) journey has been one back to the origin. The film, which he directs with Mark Gustafson, is made in stop motion, which allows simulating the movement of the figures thanks to a frame-by-frame photograph. It is the same technique with which the filmmaker experimented in his first short films. In fact, he thought of making his first feature film in this way, with clay and plasticine characters. But someone vandalized the animation studio and destroyed the puppets he and his partner had built while they both watched. viridiana.

This debut in stop motion It came in the best possible way. It was with a Netflix production in which the director had at his disposal the best technology and the best artisans of animation in Portland (United States), Manchester (United Kingdom) and Guadalajara, the filmmaker’s hometown. “He stop motion it is in permanent extinction because it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort and it is all physical”, the director stated a few months ago. Filming with the puppets lasted for 1,000 days. This is the first prize in the animation category for Netflix. The film premiered on the platform in December.

Throughout the campaign towards the Oscars, the Mexican director led a crusade in defense of the guild of those who are dedicated to animation, a message that he repeated with the statuette in hand. “Animation is cinema, it is not a genre. She is about to reach the next level, please help us, keep her present in your conversations. To animate is to give soul to something that does not have it. It is the perfect vehicle to address the big questions of the universe,” said the filmmaker at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Del Toro reiterated this message throughout the Oscar campaign: animation is not a genre for children, it is a medium for storytelling.

Del Toro already had a long experience in the field, where he had opted for other techniques. He is producer and director of the series trollhunters and tales of arcadia for Dreamworks studio. His words had a lot of echo among those who are dedicated to this genre. At the end of February she won the Annie, considered the Oscar of discipline. “I can tell I really wanted this damn award. It is the most beautiful in the world! ”, He said at the ceremony organized by the International Animated Film Association. “pinocchio it was made by artists, and the animators were treated as the cast and not as technicians”, he added after winning the association’s grand prize, which increased the chances of victory this Sunday night.

This was the sixth nomination for del Toro, one of three Mexican friends who have made it big in Hollywood over the past two decades. His first appearance in the most famous film awards was in 2006, when he was nominated for the screenplay for The Pan’s Labyrinth, which inaugurated a trilogy on the war that pinocchio closing now. Together with Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu, Del Toro starred in an incomparable five years between 2013 and 2018. Between the three of them they shared five awards for best director out of six nominations. Two statuettes for best film were also won in the same period. In 2017, Del Toro won these awards with The shape of the water. In that ceremony he only lost in best script. His presence has been a constant at the Academy Awards ever since. Last year she was present at the gala thanks to The alley of lost soulsalthough he went home empty-handed.