Grieving Guillermo Del Toro Debuts ‘Pinocchio’ in London One Day After His Mother’s Death: ‘This Was Very Special for Her and Me’

Rafa Sales Ross
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After a 14-year uphill battle, Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro was finally able to share his dream project with an audience as “Pinocchio” (officially titled “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”) had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.

Taking the stage before the premiere, del Toro spoke of his connection to the story: “I saw the film as a kid and it’s a film that bonded me with my mom for an entire life. It affected me because Pinocchio saw the world the way I saw it. 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.”

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The film’s young star, newcomer Gregory Mann, described the premiere – which coincides with his 13th birthday, a serendipitous fact that earned him a loving birthday chant from the audience – as “the best day of his life.”

While onstage, del Toro made a point to reinforce his and his team’s love for the craft of animation, “Everybody who is here believes that animation is not a genre. That animation is art. Animation is film.” Visibly emotional, the filmmaker bid a heartfelt farewell to the audience by honoring his late mother, who died the day before the film’s world premiere: “I just want to say, my mother just passed away, and this was very special for her and me. 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.”

Directed alongside Mark Gustafson (“The Fantastic Mr Fox”), the film took a whopping 1,000 days to produce, with a vast array of animators working tirelessly to bring the filmmaker’s ambitious vision to life. The effort proved worthwhile as audiences loudly laughed and discreetly wiped away tears during the film’s first public screening on Saturday at London’s imposing Royal Festival Hall.

Pinocchio himself walked the BFI London Film Festival red carpet. Well, the Pinocchio puppet used in the film. The intricate model was placed on a small pedestal as photographers crouched down to snap a picture of the miniature. Other stars in attendance included Cate Blanchett, Christoph Waltz, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos — who posed with the Pinocchio model — and composer Alexandre Desplat, who reunites with the Mexican director for the first time since the 2017 Oscar-winning drama “The Shape of Water.”

Rescued from development hell by Netflix, del Toro’s take on Carlo Collodi’s 1883 classic book “The Adventures of Pinocchio” places the famous tale of the wooden puppet who wanted to become a real boy against the sombre backdrop of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy. Mann voices the titular character while a legion of big names makes up the remainder of the cast, including Waltz, Blanchett, Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton and John Turturro.

Variety’s Guy Lodge labelled “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” “a rare children’s entertainment that isn’t afraid to perplex kids as much as it enchants them, down to a coda that prompts a certain level of junior existential contemplation (not to mention a mournful tear or two) at the notion of dead insect in a matchbox coffin in a boy’s wooden — but very real — heart. It’s a vivid, lavish stroke of weirdness, better seen than described.”

“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is one of many Netflix films to arrive in London for this year’s festival, and was one of two world premieres alongside Nora Twomey’s “My Father’s Dragon.” Other Netflix titles in the 2022 edition include Sebastian Lelio’s “The Wonder,” Alejandro González Iñárritu’s surrealist examination of cultural displacement “Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” Rian Johnson’s star-studded “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s eponymous novel “White Noise”.

“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” will have its U.S. premiere at AFI Fest in November, followed by a limited theater run before it hits Netflix worldwide on Dec. 9.

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