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Guillermo del Toro

GUADALAJARA CELEBRATES OSCAR FOR MEXICANS WITH SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO GUILLERMO DEL TORO

The introducing for the first time the Guadalajara Award. This award will distinguish outstanding personalities of the Ibero-American cinematographic community who have distinguished themselves at the international level cinema – as it happened in the Oscar Award this year.Guadalajara International Film Festival in its 22nd edition opens March 22nd in Mexico,

Guillerno del Toro could not be a better example of this community. He is one of the co-founders of the Muestra de Cine Mexicano de Guadalajara, the early stages of this Festival, and a world reference of contemporary fantasy cinema. After all, he was an active part of the rising fame of Mexicans in the 2007 Academy Awards. His movie ‘El Laberinto del Fauno’ (selected for the 30th Mostra) was nominated for six original awards and won three of them, Art Direction (Eugenio Caballero and the scenery for ‘Pilar Revuelta’), Photography (Guillermo Navarro) and Make-up (David Martí and Montse Ribé).

Besides del Toro, his fellow citizen Alfonso Cuarón was nominated for three awards for his futuristic fantasy ‘Children of Men’, while Alejandro González Iñarritu also broke a barrier and was nominated for seven awards for ‘Babel’ (30th Mostra), including the main category, having won the soundtrack award for the Argentinean Gustavo Santaollala (who won the Original Soundtrack Award for ‘Brokeback Mountain’, 29th Mostra). For this double achievement which was unheard of in the Platine cinema, a big tribute is being paid to Santaollala in the Mar del Plata Festival currently in progress this year.

Del Toro, born in Guadalajara in 1964, will receive the award during the opening ceremony of the festival. Hours before that, however, he will give a special class, alongside the Art director Eugenio Caballero, to three hundred students who have already been selected from the Cinema, Communication and Design areas. Del Toro will talk about his movie, which is the middle part of a trilogy about the Spanish Civil War, beginning with ‘El Espinazo del Diablo, 2001, and ending with ‘3993’ (expected for 2009).

Caballero will share his vast experience in the area with the students. He was the Art director of movies like ‘Romeo + Juliete’ (1996, by Baz Luhrmann), ‘Santitos’ (1999, by Alejandro Springall) and ‘Cronicas’ (2004, by Sebastián Cordero). Thanks to this movie, Caballero, through Berta Navarro Production Company, met Del Toro and started a promising partnership.

To top it all up, countless Mexican productions will take part in the competitive event, between March 23rd and 30th. Among them, an impressing number of new feature films appear: by the renowned director Simón Bross (‘Malos Hábitos’/’Bad Habits’), by Enrique Begné (‘Dos Abrazos’/’Two Embraces’), by Juan Patricio Riveroll (‘Ópera’), by Aarón Fernández Lesur (‘Partes Usadas’/’Used Parts’) and by Ernestro Contreras (‘Párpados Azules’). Contreras had conquered the biggest prize for projects at the First Ibero-American Co-production Meeting with this movie two years ago at the 20th edition of the Guadalajara festival.

To complete the list of titles already confirmed: ‘De Ángeles, Flores y Fuentes’ (‘Of Angels, Flowers and Fountains’) by Rodolfo Guzmán, Héctor Rodríguez and Francisco Rodríguez; and Juan Pablo Villaseñor’s new movie ‘Espérame en Otro Mondo’ (‘Wait for Me in the Other World’). Out of competition, the Mexican works of ‘El Violín’ (30th Mostra) by Francisco Vargas and Alejandro Springall’s most recent ‘Morirse Está en Hebreo’ by Alejandro Springall will also be exhibited.