20 years after it enchanted and horrified audiences at the Cannes Film Festival, one of director Guillermo del Toro‘s greatest films is returning to the French Riviera for a second bow. The film broke records when it debuted there in 2006, and now it’s coming back in an all-new 4K restoration, painstakingly supervised by del Toro himself. It will kick off the festival with a screening on May 12.
According to reports, Pan’s Labyrinth will headline the Cannes Classics showcase of classic films at Cannes this year. The film made its international debut at Cannes in 2006; there, it earned a 22-minute-long standing ovation, which is still the longest ovation in Cannes history. Other notable films being screened at Cannes Classics this year include Akira Kurosawa‘s debut feature, Sugata Sanshiro; Chen Kaige’s 1993 classic Farewell My Concubine; Ken Russell’s long-unavailable horror film The Devils; and Orson Welles‘ post-war thriller The Stranger. It will also see the debut of several new film-making documentaries, including Dernsie: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern, Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean (which features narration by Cate Blanchett and Kenneth Branagh), and the latest chapter in Mark Cousins‘ history of non-fiction film, The Story of Documentary Film (The 70s).
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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
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Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
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🪆Chucky
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01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
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02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
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03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
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04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
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05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
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06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
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07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
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08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
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Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
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Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
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Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
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Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
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Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
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Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
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What Is ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ About?
Set in fascist-controlled Spain in 1944, Pan’s Labyrinth centers around young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero); her new stepfather is Captain Vidal (Sergi López), a devotee of General Franco’s, and her mother (Ariadna Gil) is pregnant with his son. Vidal is attempting to root out the local Maquis insurgents, unaware that his housekeeper, Mercedes (María Verdú) is in league with them. Meanwhile, Ofelia discovers a fantastical underworld where she meets the monstrous Faun (Doug Jones), who believes she is the reincarnation of the lost Princess Moanna. She must undergo three trials to prove her worthiness to rule once more. During the course of those tasks, she encounters a variety of bizarre creatures, none more horrific than the child-eating Pale Man (Jones again). However, the horrors of the real world threaten to collide with her fantasies. The film was a hit with critics and audiences upon its initial release, and will be getting a theatrical re-release this fall.
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This year’s Cannes Classics program is dedicated to late art director and production designer Dean Tavoularis, who died in France last month. A frequent collaborator with Francis Ford Coppola, he worked on The Godfather and its sequels, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now; he also contributed to Bonnie and Clyde, Zabriskie Point, and The Ninth Gate.
A 4K restoration of Pan’s Labyrinth will premiere at the Cannes Classics film festival on May 12. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
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