PANS LABYRINTH

Ofelia's love of fairy tales is obvious from the beginning of El Laberinto del fauno. Set in the not so tranquil Spanish woodlands of World War Two, where a small band of anti-Falangist rebels are hiding out. This is where Ofelia and her pregnant mother have come to live, in the company of Capitan Vidal, Ofelia's new stepfather and soon to be father of her half-brother. It is with the brutal, unforgiving and totalitarian idealist Capitan Vidal, and his Falangist troops, who must weed out these resistance fighters of the hills and woods, that Ofelia finds her release and distraction of the new world order and its warring factions and delves into the older, mysterious and enchanting world of fairies, faun's and giant frogs. Beautiful, charming, graphic and deadly. El Laberinto del fauno.