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Guillermo del Toro most often conceives his films with his family. The Mexican director wrote in the midst of a pandemic Nightmare Alley (in theaters since January 19) with his new wife, Kim Morgan. Before marrying the screenwriter and critic, he shared with her his taste for The Charlatan, by William Lindsay Gresham, a mysterious writer, author, in 1946, of an unknown thriller masterpiece whose 22 chapters correspond to the 22 arcana of the tarot.
The 57-year-old director also forms a true family with directors Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón, the two other members of the trio of Mexicans who settled in the United States from the beginning of the 2000s and became one of the centers of seriousness of American cinema. The three men are the only generation of foreign directors – since the arrival of the Germans in the late 1930s – who have managed to flourish and prosper in such a difficult and complex Hollywood ecosystem.
Official recognition
The sign of this integration can be measured by their official recognition: Alejandro González Iñárritu received the Oscar for best film and that of best director for birdman in 2015, and again obtained the statuette of the best director the following year for the Revenant ; Guillermo del Toro won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director in 2018 for The Shape of Water ; while Alfonso Cuarón inherited the Oscar for best foreign film in 2019 for Rome.
The breakthrough in the United States was not easy. The first to try the adventure was Alfonso Cuarón, in the mid-1990s, with The little Princess. Guillermo del Toro followed suit in 1997, with Mimicking. The same year, the latter’s father was kidnapped from his home in Guadalajara. The sum requested by the kidnappers, 1 million dollars, is then supported by James Cameron, director of titanic, and friend of Guillermo del Toro.
A Mexico too dangerous
The director found his father alive and well, but “the kidnappers were never arrested, he laments M The magazine of the World during a videoconference interview. If that had been the case, I would have stayed in Mexico. But my children suddenly became potential targets. I’m not afraid of being kidnapped, but I fear it for them. I then realized that I could shoot films in Europe, in the United States, in Canada. I will come back to Mexico when I have a film to shoot there”.
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