The heroine is a girl named Ofelia, played by the uncannily talented
Ivana Baquero. Ofelia is the kind of child who eagerly reads stories
about fairies, princesses and magic lands, longing to believe that what
she reads is real. The film obliges her wish by conjuring, just beyond
the field of vision of the adults in Ofelia's life, a grotesque,
enchanted netherworld governed by the sometimes harsh rules of folk
magic. That realm, in which Ofelia is thought to be a long-lost
princess, may exist only in her imagination. The film is less
interested in debunking or explaining away the existence of magic than
in surveying the natural history of enchantment and leading us back
through the maze of human psychology into the profound mysteries of
nature. "Guillermo Del Toro uses the feverish inventiveness of a
vulnerable child's imagination as the basis for his own utterly
original, seamlessly effective exploration of power, corruption and
resistance. Pan's Labyrinth is a swift and accessible entertainment, blunt in its power and exquisite in its effects." (NY Times)
More at panslabyrinth.com
2006, color, 1 hour 52 minutes, Mexico/Spain