Guillermo Del Toro Makes Surprise Appearance At Toronto Film Festival For ‘The Boy And The Heron’

Hayao Miyazaki wasn’t at the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday for the international premiere of his movie The Boy and the Heron, but three-time Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro was.

Del Toro surprised the crowd for the movie’s gala presentation tonight and received rapturous applause at Roy Thomson Hall.

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TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey introduced del Toro as “Miyazaki’s most passionate fan.”

“He knows what makes my fat butt move!” quipped del Toro after Bailey asked him to introduce the film.

“This is the first audience to watch this movie outside of Japan,” beamed del Toro to great cheers. “This is the world, god-damn premiere!”

“Animation is film, and tonight’s film goes beyond that. Animation is hard,” said del Toro.

“We are privileged enough to be living in a time where Mozart is composing symphonies,” said del Toro. “Miyazaki san is a master of that stature, and we are so lucky to be here.”

“He has changed the medium that he started in, revolutionized it, proved over and over again that is a tremendous work of art,” del Toro continued.

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“Miyazaki, in my estimation, is the greatest director of animation ever, and he has made his films as full as dialogues and questions as he is. These are not easy films, but these are films that portray him so intimately, that you feel you’re having a conversation with him.”

“And they are paradoxical because he understands that beauty cannot exist without horror, and delicacy cannot exist without brutality.”

“He repeats motifs over and over again: flying, hope, despair, the power of innocence, the great of innocence. Each of his parables, because they become parables, are full of belief in humanity and full of heartache in humanity. I believe the film we will watch tonight will be no exception.”

It’s the first time that a Japanese title or an animated movie has opened the Toronto Film Festival.

Del Toro is no stranger to animation, having directed the stop-motion Netflix feature Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio; directed, executive produced and written on the streamer’s Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia series; and served as EP on DreamWorks Animation features Puss in Boots and Rise of the Guardians.

He will appear again on stage here in Toronto on Friday for a conversation in the Visionaries section in which he’ll talk about the liberating potential of fantastical worlds; the magic that exists within the details; and his career crafting intricate and cinematic love letters.

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As Deadline reported, The Boy and the Heron, which is making its international premiere as TIFF’s opening-night film tonight, has been sold out. Miyazaki, 82, skipped the festival; he hasn’t done press for the pic in Japan, where the movie launched sans advance marketing, in an effort to raise the pic’s mystique.

Miyazaki’s first movie in 10 years follows a teenage boy and his psychological development through encounters with his friends and uncle. He enters a magical world with a talking grey heron after finding an abandoned tower in his new town.

Previous Miyazaki Studio Ghibli titles that played TIFF include The Red Turtle (2016), The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2014), The Wind Rises (2013), From Up on Poppy Hill (2011), Spirited Away (2002) and Princess Mononoke (1999).

Bailey emphasized to Deadline in July that “TIFF is on” despite two Hollywood strikes barring several stars from showing up for the festival, which runs through September 17. Still, some pics getting SAG-AFTRA interim agreements have paved the way for such actors as Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn, Dakota Johnson, Finn Wolfhard and Nicolas Cage among others to make their way north.

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