Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro

"A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew that the Princess' soul would return, perhaps in another body, in another place, at another time. And he would wait for her, until he drew his last breath, until the world stopped turning..."

It is 1944, at the end of the Civil War, when bookish young Ofélia is brought to the country outpost of her pregnant mother's new man, the fascist Captain Vidal, who is ruthlessly engaged in rooting out the last remnants of a ragtag guerrilla group hidden in the neighboring woods.

After following a locust-like fairy into an ancient labyrinth bordering the estate, Ofélia meets the forest spirit Pan, who sets her three tasks to prove that she may be the long lost princess they have been searching for. Meanwhile outside, an altogether more real monster awaits, torturing and murdering anyone who stands in his way.

"You'll see that life is not like your fairy tales." So Ofélia is told by her mother, in one of several attempts to wean the young innocent off the high ideals and straightforward morality of her beloved fiction, where bravery and purity are rewarded with living happily ever after. Yet in Pan's Labyrinth, the world of Ofélia's imagination and the realities of Falangist Spain run in curious parallel as two different, ideologically opposed ways of telling the same story - a story of tyranny, resistance and the timeless struggle between good and evil.

The film premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Pan's Labyrinth has won numerous international awards, including three Academy Awards, the Ariel Award for Best Picture, and the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form.

The film has a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 100 percent rating among the "Cream of the Crop" critics. It received a 98% rating at Metacritic, making it Metacritic's fourth highest rated movie of all time. At its Cannes Film Festival release, it received a standing ovation. It also received a standing ovation at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival.

Complete List of Awards and Nominations