The Mexican director, producer, and screenwriter Guillermo del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco. In the mid-1980s he began shooting horror shorts such as Doña Lupe (1985) and Geometría (1987).
He studied special effects and makeup, working on various films as a makeup artist during the 1990s. His debut feature was Cronos (1993), a film about vampires starring Federico Luppi and Ron Perlman.
Cronos marked the beginning of a prolific filmmaker whose films draw inspiration from traditional fairy tales, classic Universal horror films, German expressionism, comics, the writings of Lewis Carroll, Hitchcockian suspense, and Italian giallo. In his fantasy, horror, and science fiction films, del Toro’s care in atmospheres prevails; his work is noted for its aesthetic brilliance and symbolic imagery.
Mimic (1997), a film based on a story by Donald A. Wollheim, was his first work with a Hollywood production. Later, he undertook new works that merge historical fables with the use of symbolic elements, such as in El Espinazo Del Diablo (2001), a film that had a collaboration in the production of the brothers Agustín and Pedro Almodóvar; and in El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) (2006), one of his most internationally acclaimed films.
Besides his work as a director, del Toro has also produced various films, including El Orfanato (2007), a film directed by J. A. Bayona. He later worked on La Cumbre Escarlata (2015), a ghostly nineteenth-century story; and La Forma Del Agua (The Shape of Water) (2017), a fantasy starring Sally Hawkins for which the Mexican won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best director.
Finally, in 2021 he released the animated DreamWorks film Trollhunters: The Rise of the Titans (2021) as producer, a film based on his own 2015 book that de Toro co-wrote with Daniel Kraus.
Guillermo del Toro’s passion for cinema and his great talent has led him to become a genius in cinematography. His sharp directorial eye and ability to create cinematic works of art makes him a great figure of pride in the Latin American community.
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