Guillermo del Toro is celebrating making Academy Awards history…
The 58-year-old Mexican Oscar-winning filmmaker took home the Oscar for Best Animated Feature during Sunday’s 95th Academy Awards ceremony for his adaptation of Pinocchio.
In the process, del Toro became the first person in the awards’ history to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Animated Feature.
During his acceptance speech, del Toro mentioned the following: “Animation is cinema. Animation is not a genre. Animation is ready to be taken to the next step. Keep animation in the conversation”.
In Pinocchio, which was released on Netflix last year, Gregory Mann voices the titular puppet, who is eager to learn as much as he can about the world. After Geppetto‘s (David Bradley) son is lost during the war, the woodcarver spirals into a heavy depression, making him lose his job and his desire to enjoy the small things in life. After building a wooden puppet meant to represent the child he lost, the figure is given life by the Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton).
Geppetto is given a new life himself, when he gets the opportunity to raise a kid who is very different to the one that came before him, allowing to gain a different perspective about the time he has left on this Earth.
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Swinton also voices the role of Death in the film, as Pinocchio is sent to the afterlife multiple times throughout the story. In Del Toro’s version, Death is depicted as a Chimera with the face of a human, the horns of a cape buffalo, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. The voice cast of the movie also includes Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket, Christoph Waltz as Count Volpe, Cate Blanchett as Spazzatura and Ron Perlman in the role of Podestà.
Most of the star-studded cast had already worked with del Toro in other projects, with Pinocchio giving the actors the chance of a reunion with the filmmaker.
del Toro won his Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his 2017 film The Shape of Water.
Starring Sally Hawkins as Elisa, the movie told the story of a mute woman who fell in love with an anthropomorphic amphibian creature (played by Doug Jones). Elisa comes up with a plan to help the creature escape from the secret government facility where he was kept, but the authorities didn’t want the being they considered a monster to roam freely in the outside world. After Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) shoots both Elisa and the creature, the amphibian man kills him and takes Elisa underwater with him. The woman is brought back to life, and they are implied to live happily ever after.