Guillermo del Toro, 2017, USA, 120’, VO with Spanish subtitles

In Baltimore in 1962, during the Cold War, Elisa, a cleaner who works in a high-security government laboratory comes across an amphibian man who is being secretly kept under study after being discovered in a river in South America. Like a dark fairy tale, Guillermo del Toro tells the story of the unusual relationship between the two, and their struggle against oppressive forces. With the exquisite mise en scène that characterizes del Toro’s films, The Shape of Water explores the particular personal universe of the Mexican director: how to use the fantasy genre to make films with strong political content.