Guillermo del Toro

In Guillermo del Toro's films the misshapen creatures are usually the most sympathetic people in them, while self-righteous, sadistic men try to drag us to hell. He is Mexican, and he is counted among the names who, with Inarritu and Cuaron, widened the horizon of American cinema in the twenty-first century. His first feature, Cronos, was a surprisingly settled piece of work. Pan's Labyrinth is set against the Spanish Civil War, and The Devil's Backbone is in a way its other face, telling of a small boy in a world the civil war has wrecked. On the Hollywood side there are Blade II, Hellboy and Pacific Rim. The Shape of Water is one of the best and strangest films to have taken the best picture Oscar in a long time.