The lonely Pinocchio is about to have some company on the shelf: Guillermo del Toro just won his third Academy Award, this time for best animated feature for his stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio. “Animation is cinema, animation is not a genre,” del Toro said in an emotional acceptance speech. “And animation is ready to be taken to the next step. We are all ready for it. Please help us keep animation in the conversation.”

The filmmaker’s long-in-the-works animated debut has spent the awards season racking up wins left and right, from the Golden Globes to the Annie Awards. Del Toro’s version of the classic story is set in fascist Italy, putting a typically macabre twist on an already eerie tale. But the film is shot through with del Toro’s love of monsters of all stripes; it lightly alters Pinocchio’s ending so that instead of changing himself to be loved, Pinocchio changes the world around him.

Co-directed with Mark Gustafson (an animation director on Fantastic Mr. Fox), Pinocchio is also a loving tribute to its eye-dazzling genre, stop-motion animation. It's good to know that this art form that we love so much, stop-motion is very much alive and well," Gustafson said in his speech. Pinocchio is the first stop-motion film to win best animated feature since Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2006. 

Pinocchio marks del Toro’s seventh Academy Award nomination and his third win (It's also the first win in animated feature for a streamer). In 2018 del Toro took home Oscars for best picture and best director for The Shape of Water; he's the first person in history to win picture, director and animated feature. Last year was a busy one for the celebrated filmmaker: Between Oscar ceremonies he also shepherded Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities onto Netflix and opened a Museum of Modern Art exhibition dedicated to his fantastical work. All that, while still managing to find time to paint a few models before bed. Apparently, there’s no rest for the multitalented.  

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is streaming on Netflix now.

Go Behind the Scenes of Guillermo del Toro's PinocchioFor stop-motion animation, everything has to be built. And we mean everything.