Pan’s Labyrinth

Plots: In 1944 Francoist Spain, an imaginative young girl meets a faun who tells her she’s a princess and that she must prove her worthiness by completing three dangerous tasks. In 1944 Falangist Spain, a girl, fascinated with fairy-tales, is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather, a ruthless captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun in the center of the labyrinth. He tells her she’s a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks. If she fails, she will never prove herself to be the true princess and will never see her real father, the king, again. Ofelia’s love of fairy tales is obvious from the beginning of El Laberinto del fauno. Set in the not so tranquil Spanish woodlands of World War Two, where a small band of anti-Falangist rebels are hiding out. This is where Ofelia and her pregnant mother have come to live, in the company of Capitán Vidal, Ofelia’s new stepfather and soon to be father of her half-brother. It is with the brutal, unforgiving and totalitarian idealist Capitán Vidal, and his Falangist troops, who must weed out these resistance fighters of the hills and woods, that Ofelia finds her release and distraction of the new world order and its warring factions and delves into the older, mysterious and enchanting world of fairies, faun’s and giant frogs. Beautiful, charming, graphic and deadly. El Laberinto del fauno.