Guillermo del Toro's 'Crimson Peak' opens Morelia Film Festival

Morelia: Mexican moviemaker Guillermo del Toro's masterpiece "Crimson Peak" opened the 13th Morelia International Film Festival.

On Friday, the Morelia Film Fest kicked off its presentation of 55 short subjects, 12 documentaries, 13 works by filmmakers from Michoacan state, and 10 feature films by directors and producers from other cities around Mexico.

The festival also celebrates the best of British classical and contemporary films as part of the Mexico-United Kingdom Dual Year, EFE reported on Saturday.

In the festival, which wraps on November 1, a selection of 40 of the best in national and international movies will also be screened.

Making their Mexican debuts in that group will be such works as "Chronic" by Michel Franco, a film awarded the Best Screenplay award at the 2015 Cannes Festival, "Las Elegidas" by David Pablos, "Bleak Street" by Arturo Ripstein, "Desierto" by Jonas Cuaron, and "From Afar" by Lorenzo Vigas, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

There will also be a special showing of "600 Miles" by Gabriel Ripstein, to be Mexico's entry at the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film.

Thierry Fremaux, general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival and general director of the Lumiere Institute, announced that the Morelia Film Fest will also celebrate the 120th anniversary of the birth of movies with a special event consisting of 98 restored short subjects produced by the Lumiere brothers and their team between 1895 and 1905.

Fremaux, considered a close friend of Guillermo del Toro, described the latter's gothic melodrama as "the poetry of the monstrous", because of its mix of terror, drama and romance.

"He's a poet - every movie, above all this one, evinces the poetry of the monstrous and shows Guillermo to be a child of the 1930s and '40s, as in silent films," he said.

The Frenchman said that every year the Morelia festival imposes itself more as one of the world's most important film showcases, and compared the quality of its work favorably with that seen at Cannes.

"I think it's very important for me to be here and I believe the work we do at Cannes is just like the work done here, which makes Morelia a very important place in the world of movies," he said.