Guillermo del Toro has issued a stark warning about the future of cinema, calling artificial intelligence a form of “natural stupidity” and warning that the film industry is approaching a crisis point.
The Oscar-winning director made the remarks Monday evening while receiving the BFI Fellowship, the British Film Institute’s highest honor, at a dinner in Hollywood.
Speaking to a room full of industry figures, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jon Favreau, Michael Mann and Netflix executives, del Toro passionately defended cinema as a fundamentally human art form.
“We are on the verge of illiteracy in terms of images. We are on the verge of illiteracy in cinema,” he told the crowd.
The creative impulse, he says, is as old as the images painted on cave walls and cannot be reproduced by machines.
“We are told that images can be generated by artificial means. The existence of an image is not just about being there. It must connect us, make us feel beauty,” he said.
“The pact between man and image is sacred.”
His connection to the BFI dates back to his teenage years in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he wrote to the organization requesting 16mm prints of films by directors like Carol Reed to screen for his film club.
Receiving the scholarship, he said, moved him deeply.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who introduced Del Toro, recalled their first meeting when Del Toro was developing an animated adaptation of Trollhunters for the platform.
“I came into the meeting thinking, ‘Why is this master filmmaker directing what I thought was a cartoon for us?’” Sarandos said.
“And then I watched Guillermo create a universe before my eyes.”
Del Toro defined his current chapter as one of giving back, teaching, defending and preserving. “We are not gatekeepers. We are gatekeepers so that more people can come in and out of the church of cinema,” he said.
“I have been saved by images so many times in my life.” On the permanence of great films, he was equally explicit: “These films are never in the past. When someone sees them for the first time, they are present.”
