"Pan's Labyrinth" ("El laberinto del fauno") by Guillermo del Toro (2006)

Quite unlike anything else I remember seeing on the screen previously, this unforgettable movie deals with contrast between children's fantasy world and harsh reality that surrounds them. Its almost as Guillermo del Toro tapped in something we are all aware but chose to forget, how it was to be small and vulnerable amongst grown up people with their problems and big arguments. Instead of creating movie for children, he decided to present it as allegory of childhood with very dark undertones, so its not really for kids - too disturbing for little souls who shouldn't be scarred with something so brutal - but for mature audiences and apparently I am still not completely grown up, since I found it occasionally very disturbing.

Little Ofelia lives in a fantasy world of fairies and fairy tales, while civil war rages all around her, people are tortured and killed left and right - her innocence protects her from understanding this and she is too busy following her magical friends from the forest. In the meantime her mother suffers difficult pregnancy and stepfather is cruel Captain Vidal who haunts countryside rebels, unaware that one of them is in his own household as a spy. It is quite a gripping story and director (who also wrote script himself) tops it off with spectacular visual effects that make it looks like Disney horror movie - Ofelia's supernatural friends, visible only to her, are unforgettable and I must mention faun who is actually genuinely spooky and threatening, he is obviously older than humans and there is something sinister about him but Ofelia is too busy with her fantasies to notice it. 

I watched it recently for the second time and again got carried away with it to the point that I was protesting loudly, while friends wondered why do I care so much because "its only a movie" - well, the part of me is obviously still child like Ofelia because for me movies are not just movies. My music, books and movies as as real as anything else around me and often much more important, some of us are just born that way and we never lose it.