pan's labyrinth

San Diego, CA -- Guillermo Del Toro's new film, Pan's Labyrinth, promises to be a stunning, fantastical, and insightful new film. The plot is a fairly typical coming-of-age story in which a young girl, faced with the reality of post-war fascist Spain, retreats to her own fantasy world using mythic devices to approach and manage the difficulties of real life. However, while the plot may seem initially superficial, Del Toro combines Spanish sensibilities, fairytale conventions, and a battery of visually remarkable effects to make Pan's Labyrinth something entirely unique. Described as "some Alice [in Wonderland], some Hans Christian Andersen, and lots of oral tradition," Del Toro says he hopes to show how much imagination Spanish and Mexican filmmakers really have, and, for this reason, would not do the film in English, despite its widening the prospective audience.