Guillermo del Toro at Cannes: 'Art Can't Be Done With a F---ing App'

Guillermo del Toro appeared at Cannes Classics on May 13 to present the 4K restoration of "Pan's Labyrinth" on its 20th anniversary and delivered a speech that Festival General Delegate Thierry Frémaux called "the first political statement of the festival". Del Toro used the occasion to issue a direct attack on generative AI, framing the film's themes of resistance against fascism as a response to what he called the current cultural moment.

The Speech

Del Toro told the Cannes Classics audience: "We are, unfortunately, in times that make this movie more pertinent than ever, because they tell us everything is useless to resist, that art can be done with a f---ing app".

He did not limit his remarks to aesthetics. The speech drew a direct line between the film's resistance narrative and what he sees as the cultural threat posed by AI replacing human creative work. "If we can just leave a mark, if we can put our faith against our faith... there is hope", he said. He closed with a declaration: "Never, never, never give to fear".

Pan's Labyrinth at Twenty

"Pan's Labyrinth" premiered at Cannes in 2006, where it won three awards. The film is set in Spain in the years after the Civil War and follows a young girl who retreats into a fantasy world of fauns and fairies while her stepfather, a fascist military officer, wages a brutal campaign against republican guerrillas. Del Toro wrote and directed it in Spanish, funding the film partly with his own money after studios passed on the project.

The film has since become one of the most studied works of contemporary fantasy cinema. Its pairing of political horror and fairy tale logic is considered a defining example of genre filmmaking used to process historical trauma. Cannes Classics selected it for a 4K digital restoration for the 20th anniversary, presented with del Toro in attendance to introduce the restored version.

Frémaux's Response

Frémaux's designation of the speech as "the first political statement of the festival" carries weight. Cannes has historically drawn clear distinctions between artistic and political interventions, and Frémaux used this phrase to mark del Toro's remarks as the opening act in a broader debate the festival expected to define the 2026 edition.

His description also frames del Toro's position as coming from inside the industry, not from outside critics. Del Toro is a filmmaker with two Oscar wins, including Best Director for "The Shape of Water" in 2018. His credibility as a craftsman gives the statement a different register than a cultural commentator making the same argument. The contrast with his peers sharpened in June 2026 when Martin Scorsese joined Black Forest Labs as an advisor, describing FLUX storyboarding as "creatively freeing".

A Consistent Position

Del Toro told NPR in January 2026 that he would "rather die" than use generative AI in his work. The Cannes speech is consistent with that position, but it extends it. Where the NPR interview was a personal statement about his own practice, the Cannes speech was directed outward: at the industry, at the audience, and at the technology's advocates.

His argument is not technical. He does not dispute that AI can generate images or write text. His argument is that the act of making art carries meaning that the tool cannot supply, and that accepting the substitution represents a form of cultural surrender he frames in explicitly political terms.

The Spectrum at Cannes

Del Toro's speech arrived at a festival where the AI debate is not abstract. The Cannes competition has banned generative AI from its Official Selection while the Marché du Film runs dedicated commercial AI programming. Frémaux's own proposal for organic labeling of films made without AI, floated on opening day, comes from the same impulse as del Toro's speech: a desire to preserve a category of work that AI has not touched.

At the same festival, Steven Soderbergh is presenting a John Lennon documentary that uses Meta AI for 10% of its runtime, explicitly defending his approach as transparent and responsible. On the commercial side, David Mamet's "Speed the Plow" adaptation was announced at the Marché using the New Hollywood AI platform for preproduction tools. The festival holds all three positions simultaneously: the ban, the disclosure, and the commercial adoption.

Del Toro's contribution to that spectrum is the most uncompromising. His Cannes Classics platform gave it the weight of ceremony and of a great film's anniversary. Whether the argument lands with the industry will take longer to measure than the week in which he made it.

Days later at the same festival, Seth Rogen made the same argument focused specifically on screenwriting, telling reporters that writers who use AI to write their scripts "shouldn't be a writer".

Filmmakers working with AI video generation tools can generate text-to-video and image-to-video at the AI FILMS Studio video workspace.

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Sources

Deadline | Variety | The Wrap | Washington Post