MARRAKECH – Mexican master filmmaker Guillermo del Toro turned heads at the 22nd Marrakech International Film Festival on Friday with a provocative meditation on mortality, declaring himself “a big fan of death” while defending emotional storytelling against what he sees as modern civilization’s embrace of cynicism.
In a nearly two-hour In Conversation session moderated by Kim Morgan, screenwriter of “Nightmare Alley” and del Toro’s wife, the director discussed the influence of Romantic poets on his filmography and his 50-year journey to adapting “Frankenstein.”
The three-time Oscar winner received one of the Marrakech festival’s highest honors, with the 22nd edition celebrating his contribution to world cinema alongside fellow honorees Jodie Foster, Egyptian actor Hussein Fahmi, and Moroccan actress Raouya.
“Why should you want to live longer?” del Toro asked the crowd of festival attendees, journalists and film students. “I’m a big fan of death … I think death is really good. I’m certainly looking forward to it, because it’s the day you go, ‘Well, tomorrow I won’t have any problems.’”
The startling declaration came amid a wide-ranging discussion that touched on the director’s lifelong obsession with monsters, his fierce opposition to artificial intelligence, and his belief that emotion has become the new form of rebellion in contemporary culture.
Del Toro recalled first seeing Boris Karloff at age 7: “That was religion. That was my church,” he said. The encounter with Karloff’s performance as Frankenstein’s monster in James Whale’s 1931 film proved transformative. “I immediately felt that what my grandmother used to feel about Jesus, I now felt about Boris. And I saw myself in him,” del Toro explained, describing how “I was a very strange child at age seven, and I felt that he didn’t belong in the world the same way I didn’t belong in the world.”
That childhood revelation launched a half-century quest to bring his own vision of Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece to the screen. Now, after finally bringing his own interpretation of “Frankenstein” to life, del Toro joked about the emotional crash that followed its completion, admitting he feels “postpartum depression” after letting go of a dream he carried for half a century.
The Netflix epic, starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, represents the culmination of del Toro’s deep immersion in Romantic literature and philosophy. Del Toro studied Romantic poets extensively, particularly Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, incorporating their philosophical sensibilities into his cinematic language. “I fused with the romantic sensibility, the pre-Victorian sensibility. I felt completely taken by the principles of romantic movement, both in music and in painting,” he said.
In the spirit of the Romantic poets, del Toro said he wanted “Frankenstein” to “feel like an opera.” This operatic ambition reflects his broader critique of contemporary culture’s uncomfortable relationship with genuine feeling.
“I’m Mexican, so emotion is big for me,” he added. “I think emotion is very scarce right now. We have reached a point in civilization where emotion seems to be something you hide. We are in a horrible moment in which cynicism simulates intelligence. If you say, ‘I believe in love,’ you’re a fool. If you say, ‘I don’t believe in love,’ you’re a wise man. I don’t agree with any of that,” del Toro declared.
Del Toro’s rejection of emotional restraint extends to his fierce opposition to the use of artificial intelligence in creative fields. “Fuck AI,” he declared emphatically and without hesitation. “It’s not about artificial intelligence. Intelligence is not the matter. It’s stupidity. They want to foster stupidity. They want you to relinquish your spirit and your emotion to an algorithm that is gonna create art, but it’s not – it’s illustration.”
The director put his resistance within broader cultural movements. “The main fight of the romantic spirit was against the industrial revolution,” he said. “And we should not relinquish everything to the machine. It’s the same spirit we’re in right now.”
Del Toro thinks there is a sacred relationship between humanity and artistic creations. “Images are sacred, no matter what they tell us that can be done with them. They cannot be permutations. They have to feed from your spirit and your pain and your humanity,” he declared. “There is a tacit covenant between mankind and images that is sacred,” he said.
The In Conversation session revealed del Toro’s personal connection to his filmography. “I have very little social life to speak of. This is my life,” he said. “To me, this is not my filmography, it’s my biography. When I see these things, it’s like watching a family album.”
His extensive body of work includes “Cronos” (1993), “The Devil’s Backbone” (2001), “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006), “Hellboy” (2004), “Pacific Rim” (2013), “Crimson Peak” (2015), “The Shape of Water” (2017), and “Pinocchio” (2022). “The Shape of Water” won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, while “Pinocchio” earned the Oscar for Best Animated Film.
Del Toro’s appearance at the Moroccan festival, running through December 6, coincides with a stellar lineup of In Conversations, featuring jury president Bong Joon Ho, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, and “Matrix” star Laurence Fishburne. The festival opened with Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire” and will close with Annemarie Jacir’s “Palestine 36.”
The Marrakech tribute comes as “Frankenstein” continues its awards season momentum.
