Director Guillermo del Toro Attends 'Pinocchio' Premiere One Day After His Mother's Death

Tommy McArdle
·2 min read
Director Guillermo del Toro Attends 'Pinocchio' Premiere One Day After His Mother's Death
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Guillermo del Toro marked the world premiere of his new Pinocchio adaptation by honoring his late mother.

At the BFI London Film Festival Saturday, del Toro, 58, said onstage before the film's premiere that seeing Walt Disney's 1940 animated Pinocchio movie "bonded me with my mom for an entire life" just one day after his mother died, according to Variety.

"It affected me because Pinocchio saw the world the way I saw it," the Nightmare Alley director said. "I was a little bit enraged that people demand obedience from Pinocchio, so I wanted to make a film about disobedience as a virtue, and to say that you shouldn't change to be loved."

Director Guillermo del Toro attends the "Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio" world premiere during the 66th BFI London Film Festival at The Royal Festival Hall on October 15, 2022 in London, England.
Director Guillermo del Toro attends the "Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio" world premiere during the 66th BFI London Film Festival at The Royal Festival Hall on October 15, 2022 in London, England.

Jeff Spicer/Getty

Del Toro's stop-motion Pinocchio adaptation, co-directed with Mark Gustafson, comes from the auteur and his team's love for animation and del Toro's bond with his mother, as he explained at the world premiere.

"Everybody who is here believes that animation is not a genre," del Toro said. "That animation is art. Animation is film."

"I just want to say, my mother just passed away, and this was very special for her and me," he added before the screening, per Variety. "This is not only the first time you'll see the movie, it's the first time she'll see the movie with us. Thank you."

RELATED: Guillermo del Toro Retells the 'Story of the Wooden Boy' in New Trailer for Stop-Motion Pinocchio

Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro poses on the red carpet on arrival to attend the World Premiere of "Pinocchio", during the 2022 BFI London Film Festival in London on October 15, 2022.
Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro poses on the red carpet on arrival to attend the World Premiere of "Pinocchio", during the 2022 BFI London Film Festival in London on October 15, 2022.

ISABEL INFANTES/AFP via Getty

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The director even brought the Pinocchio puppet used for the film to the red carpet to attend the premiere of the upcoming Netflix film, posing for photos with the mini wooden figurine (voiced by 13-year-old actor Gregory Mann) ahead of the film's screening.

Del Toro previously told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 his connection to the story: "No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation, and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio."

"In our story, Pinocchio is an innocent soul with an uncaring father who gets lost in a world he cannot comprehend," the director continued. "He embarks on an extraordinary journey that leaves him with a deep understanding of his father and the real world. I've wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember."

Pinocchio's voice cast includes Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Harry Potter's David Bradley as Geppetto, Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Ron Perlman, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman and Christoph Waltz.

Pinocchio is on Netflix Dec. 9.