It’s been an unusually quiet year for filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. Always known as a man with multiple projects going at once, del Toro has taken a year off since completing work on his Oscar-winning feature “The Shape of Water,” and according to a new interview, the break was for incredibly admirable reasons.
Recently, it was announced that del Toro is going to direct a stop-motion “Pinocchio” film for Netflix. However, before that, the filmmaker was noticeably gone from the public eye, as he was taking time off to enjoy his Oscar win and to focus on family, as well as some philanthropic endeavors.
As he explains to Empire, the main reason for the quiet 2018 was due to some pressing family concerns. “Before [‘The Shape of Water’] was finished, I decided I was going to take a year off from directing. And I have done it,” he said. “I decided to do that because my father was dying and I wanted to be by his side as much as he needed me […] I am grateful that he saw the Oscars and that I was able to mention him and my mother, both there and at the Globes.”
But it wasn’t just family reasons that led to del Toro’s absence. No, the filmmaker also took the spotlight he received from his multiple Oscar wins to focus on a couple causes near and dear to his heart. “I have used the time immediate to the Oscars to activate two scholarships for young Mexican filmmakers and activated an animation center that will open next year and helped with the local cinematheque in my home town,” he revealed. “I thought that the momentum needed to be used in that way.”
While many have mourned the lack of del Toro goodness in 2018, it appears that the filmmaker was taking a well-deserved break from Hollywood and focusing on what matters to him most — family and the future of film. We can’t be mad at that, at all.