During an appearance at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Guillermo del Toro called the making of “Pan’s Labyrinth” the “second worst filmmaking experience of my life” and lamented living in a time when people insist “art can be done with a f—king app.”
Del Toro stopped by the festival this week to speak after a screening of a new 4K restoration of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” his Oscar-winning 2006 dark fantasy film set in the midst of Spain’s Franco dictatorship. The film had its original world premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a 22-minute standing ovation, which still holds the record for the longest in the festival’s history.
“It was so weird because, in spite of my great body, I’m not used to adulation,” del Toro said of that 2006 ovation, while speaking on the festival stage after the “Pan’s Labyrinth” restoration’s screening this week. “It’s very hard for me to take love. And Alfonso Cuarón was there with me in the hallway and he said, ‘Let it in. Let the love get in.’”
“We are, unfortunately, in times that make this movie more pertinent than ever because they tell us everything is useless to resist, that art can be done with a fucking app and we are facing things so formidable,” del Toro later said. “But I feel and I think, like the girl Ofelia in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth,’ if we can just leave a mark, if we can put our faith against our faith and our strength against our strength, there is hope.”
“The last thing we can have is to give to one of the two forces: we can give to love, or we can give to fear,” del Toro added. “Never, never, never give to fear.”
Del Toro’s “f—king app” comment was no doubt partly in reference to the growing conversation around the use of AI in movies and television. The Oscar winner has repeatedly made his stance in that debate clear, having already said “f—k AI” publicly multiple times and revealing last year that he would “rather die” than use generative AI in any of his work.
Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” restoration, which was created using an original 35mm negative of the film, is screening at Cannes this year as part of the festival’s Cannes Classics lineup. While speaking about the film at the festival this week, del Toro reflected on some of the struggles he experienced making it.
“Twenty years ago, making this movie was like going against everything at all times,” del Toro said. “It was the second worst filmmaking experience of my life, the first one being ‘Mimic’ with the Weinsteins. That was horrible.”
“No one wanted to finance it, and in production we had everything that could go wrong, go wrong,” he added. “And then, in post-production it was equally difficult.” The film is still viewed by many as del Toro’s best work.
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