"It would have been impossible to film El Labertinto de Fauno digitally"
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, November 11th, 2006

Guillermo Navarro, cinematographic director of “El Labertinto de Fauno", directed by Guillermo del Toro, explained after the showing of the film at the Dominican Global Film Festival that the work is antifascist without being politicized.

"El Laberinto de Fauno", the most recent work of Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, was very well received by a large audience yesterday night in the Manuel del Cabral Auditorium of the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) library.

After the showing of the film, which was the most anticipated movie of the Dominican Global Film Festival, Guillermo Navarro took both technical and content questions from the audience. "It would not have been possible to film this movie digitally. This is regardless of the fact that I am against digital filming – I believe in working with film, and I will use it until it stops being made. The characteristics of this movie simply would not have permitted digital filming", explained Navarro in response to a question from the audience, “It is a very dark and difficult film for which we worked with a lot of natural light".

The Mexican filmmaker addressed another technical aspect of the film with an explanation of the movie’s double narrative. "It was difficult to make it work, to combine the cruelty of war and the magic imagination of a little girl. It has all the elements of a fairytale, even tests that must be passed for one to move on".

Beyond issues of technique, Guillermo Navarro also took care to emphasize the message of the film, “It’s an anti-fascist work. There is political content, but it is not a politicized film," explained Navarro to an audience, who, despite it being past midnight, did not stop asking questions. “The background of the film is in line with what we are feeling now. We don’t want the little girl to die; we want her to survive, to be revived, which is just how we feel about the state of the world and the many issues we are currently facing". "El Laberinto del Fauno" is the story of a young girl who travels with her adoptive parents to a rural area in the North of Spain in 1944 after Franco’s rise to power. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and confronts the real world with great difficulty. Fascist post-war repression is at its peak in rural Spain, and the young girl must deal with it in terms of her own fable.

The Festival, which runs until November 12, was organized by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development (GFDD) www.globalfoundationdd.org and the Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE) http://www.funglode.org/FunglodeApp/. Under the title “Global Issues, Personal Stories”, the Festival seeks to increase global awareness via the retelling of personal stories and circumstances.