Guillermo del Toro wins Oscar for ‘Pinocchio’

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Guillermo del Toro won his third career Oscar on Sunday and Netflix’s first in the animated feature category for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.”

The category has been dominated by companies produced by Walt Disney or Pixar over the past decade, with the exception of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”

“Animation is ready to take the next step. We’re all ready for that. Help us keep animation in the conversation,” said Del Toro, who previously won Academy Awards for Best Direction and for best film for “The Shape of Water” in 2018.

“Pinocchio,” a stop-motion animated musical rendition of the classic story about the puppet yearning to be a real boy, was considered the strongest contender in the category. It had already won the Golden Globe and the animation industry’s highest honor at the Annie Awards.

Other nominees for Best Animated Feature were “Turning Red” (“Red”), “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”, and “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”. . (“The Sea Monster”).

The English voice cast includes Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz, Oscar-nominated Cate Blanchett, and Tilda Swinton.

“Pinocchio” received rave reviews for having a surprisingly beautiful production with a plot that tackles themes like love and death. At the antipodes of the Disney version of 1940, this “Pinocchio” also refers to Catholicism, fascism and the horrors of war.

The movie wasn’t about the main character learning how to be the perfect kid, del Toro noted.

“I think it’s a lesson that’s urgent in the world,” he told reporters in the newsroom after his win. “We say disobedience is not only necessary, it is a virtue.”

The Mexican-born director said animation is pure cinema, joining animators who in recent years have fought the stigma that animated films are a genre only for children.

For Del Toro, animators should be treated as artists and not as technicians. He noted that in “Pinocchio”, the animators appear in the credits even before the main voice actors.

“It’s an art form that has been commercially and industrially on children’s tables for a long time,” said Del Toro. “A win helps, but it’s about moving forward as a community to get there.”

Co-director Mark Gustafson echoed the same message.

“It’s great to know that this art form that we love so much, stop-motion (stop-motion animation), is alive and well,” Gustafson said.

Del Toro, who set up two film scholarships, says he has now pledged to fund a stop motion course for Mexican students at the Gobelins animation school.

“The agency’s first duty is to do it really well…because you’re not doing it for yourself,” del Toro added. “You do it for the people who come after you and are looking for opportunities. If you don’t, you’re closing that door.”

When del Toro arrived in the United States in the 1990s, he faced “a lot of overt and subtle racism”. He recalled “with great disgust” an interview his cinematographer, Oscar winner Guillermo Navarro, had with a talent agent.

The agent “told him ‘why do I want a Mexican?’ I already have a gardener.

Although things have improved for people of color, there is still a very difficult glass ceiling to overcome.

“You have to keep pushing all the time. It does not end with a generation. It doesn’t end with one person,” del Toro said. “But again, together, we push that limit further and further and opportunities are created.”