On Thursday July 26th Ravenna Nightmare, in collaboration with Cinemaincentro, will propose a special night called A midsummer night's nightmare at Rocca Brancaleone, Ravenna's summer arena where Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water will be screened.
Winner of 4 Oscars 2018, such as Best Film and Best Directing, Best Screenplay and Best OST, it definitely is the most suitable film for representing new spirit and horizons of Ravenna Nightmare's 16th edition. 21.30's screening will be anticipated by a brief introduction by Festival's organizers who will present to the audience first news on the next edition.
For the occasion Ravenna Nightmare makes available to its followers a limited number of free tickets. In order to credit yourselves, simply send an email to coordinamento@ravennanightmare.it.
Elisa, young mute woman, works in a scientific laboratory in Baltimore where Americans are fighting the Cold War. Hired as cleaning lady, Elisa has a deep friendship with Zelda, afroamerican collegue that fights for her rights both inside her marriage and society, and Giles, homosexual neighbour who is being discriniminated on his job.
Different in a world full of monsters with reassuring faces, in the lab they find out that there is an amphibian creature surviving in captivity, a creature of great intelligence and sensibility. Damned to silence and solitude, Elisa falls in love with that mystery living between air and water. But their feeling will soon have to come to terms with a hostile hierarchy personified by despotic Strickland. At full speed against the Russians, United States do not skimp on expenses and cruelty. In order to guarantee a stellar future to himself, and to his Country, Strickland is ready to do anything.
Observing contemporary art is enough to convince yourself of the effects on ecosystem and subsequently on men's life determined by transformations in aquatic life. From Damien Hirst, valuing corals menaced by ocean's warming, up to Suzanne Husky and her sirens, the bottom of the sea has always been attracting and haunting countless artists.
If some of them focuse on what's at risk now in the ocean floor, others see in it an ancestral mythology as well as a new anxiety. Architect of nightmares, Guillermo del Toro belongs to this second category, renewing moist and furious affinities that human beings have with the bottom of the sea. Suspended between land nevrosis (the Cold War and irreduscible fear of the different) and watery iridescences, The Shape of Water creates a new continent standing between sea and land, preventing from drowning through the power of ghosts.
Guillermo del Toro Gómez was born on October 9th 1964 in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he studied at Centro de Investigación y Estudios Cinematográficos. He became passionate about cinema at an early stage, realising brief short films, but he made his entrance into the film industry first as a make-up and special effects artist (he also founded his own company, Necropia). It was only in 1993, after directing short films Doña Lupe (1985) and Geometria (1987) and some Mexican tv programmes, that he shot his first feature film, the horror Cronos (1993). In 1997 Miramax produced his second work, Mimic, whose cast includes also Giancarlo Giannini. The following year his father was kidnapped and freed only after ransom had been paid, it's an event that overwhelmed his life, forcing the entire del Toro family to move to the United States.
After his third horror film produced in Spain it was the turn of The Deviil's Backbome (2001), considered one of his best works, that is dedicated to the cinematographic transposition of two comic books with superheroes out of the ordinary, Blade II (2002) and Hellboy (2004), both characterized by those dark colours that del Toro loves so much.
Global success is in 2006 with Pan's Labyrinth, that can be regarder as the second film of fantasy-horror trilogy set during and after Spanish civil war, started with The Devil's Backbone. The film won three Oscars as well as superb reviews both from critics and audiences worlwide, elevating him as a master of the genre and further outlining his style mixing fairytales's magic atmosphere with darker shades of horror cinema.
2013 is the year of del Toro's sci-fi Pacific Rim, this too based on a comic, scoring another success. Two years later Crimson Peak (2015) terrorized the audience with ghosts, incests and massacres, staging Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain. In 2017 at 74th Mostra internazionale d'arte cinematografica of Venice, del Toro presented fantasy dark romantic fairytale The Shape of Water that secured him Leone d'oro, his first Golden Globe as Best Director and, last but not least, 13 Oscar 2018 nominations, among which Best Film and Best Directing.
Guillermo del Toro has also been carrying on his activity as writer of horror novels, so far he has made a trilogy, Nocturna, written four-handed with ChuCk Hogan and that is dedicated to vampires, and two stories, created together with Daniel Kraus, one of which is The Shape of Water that inspired his film.
