Guillermo Del Toro to Program Mexican Film Retrospective for Toronto Film Festival

The Oscar-winning 'Shape of Water' director is selecting, with co-curator Diana Sanchez, 25 films from six decades to screen at Bell Lightbox.

Oscar-winning The Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro is set to co-program a Mexican film retrospective for the Toronto Film Festival.

The auteur and co-curator Diana Sanchez will select 25 films that span six decades to screen at TIFF's year-round headquarters, Bell Lightbox, in Toronto.

After he and fellow countrymen Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Birdman) have produced films from up-and-coming Mexican filmmakers, del Toro said the Sui generis: An Alternative History of Mexican Cinema program will showcase the masters that inspired him and new generations of Mexican auteurs.

"The series not just explores some of the films that most influenced myself and the current generation of filmmakers working today in Mexico, but it also reflects the depth and the richness of my country’s cinema: genre, auteurist efforts, and independent film,” del Toro added in a statement.

The lineup for Sui generis: An Alternative History of Mexican Cinema has yet to be unveiled. The film showcase will feature titles from the Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s to a contemporary renaissance starting in the 1990s and promises to be just as eccentric as del Toro and his movies like Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy and Pacific Rim.

"Many of the films we present are by filmmakers who are unafraid to play with themes, with social mores, with genre-bending stories. It speaks to a diversity and idiosyncrasy that is uniquely Mexican," he added.

An adopted Torontonian, as his family lives locally, Del Toro earlier held master classes at Bell Lightbox and saw his At Home With Monsters exhibit have a run at TIFF's year-round headquarters. The Mexican masters showcase follows Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma having a theatrical run at Bell Lightbox in 4K Dolby Atmos before streaming on Netflix.