PAN'S LABYRINTH/BD

An Academy Award winning dark fable set five years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Pans Labyrinth encapsulates the rich visual style and genre-defying craft of Guillermo del Toro (The Devils Backbone, Cronos). Eleven-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero, in a mature and tender performance) comes face to face with the horrors of fascism when she and her pregnant mother are uprooted to the countryside, where her new stepfather (Sergi Lopez), a sadistic captain in General Francos army, hunts down Republican guerrillas who refuse to give up the fight. The violent reality in which she lives merges seamlessly with a fantastical interior world when Ofelia meets a faun in a decaying labyrinth and is set on a strange, mythic journey that is at once terrifying and beautiful. In his revisiting of this bloody period in Spanish history, del Toro creates a vivid depiction of the monstrosities of war infiltrating a childs imagination and threatening the innocence of youth.

An Academy Award winning dark fable set five years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Pan's Labyrinth encapsulates the rich visual style and genre-defying craft of Guillermo del Toro (The Devil's Backbone, Cronos). Eleven-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero, in a mature and tender performance) comes face to face with the horrors of fascism when she and her pregnant mother are uprooted to the countryside, where her new stepfather (Sergi Lopez), a sadistic captain in General Franco's army, hunts down Republican guerrillas who refuse to give up the fight. The violent reality in which she lives merges seamlessly with a fantastical interior world when Ofelia meets a faun in a decaying labyrinth and is set on a strange, mythic journey that is at once terrifying and beautiful. In his revisiting of this bloody period in Spanish history, del Toro creates a vivid depiction of the monstrosities of war infiltrating a child's imagination and threatening the innocence of youth.