Guillermo del Toro's much-anticipated dark fable, Pan's Labyrinth, was very well received by an afternoon audience at the Toronto International Film Festival today. The film, which played at the historic Elgin Theater to a packed house, garnered a lengthy standing ovation, amid shouts of "Bravo!", "Encore!", and "Viva Guillermo!" Director del Toro, when introducing the film, said that the film is a follow-up to his 2001 film, The Devil's Backbone. The director noted that The Devil's Backbone, a ghost story set in 1939, three years after the end of the bloody Spanish Civil War, screened at Toronto on September 9, 2001. On the 10th, he and his cast and crew went back to Los Angeles. The next day, of course, was 9/11, and that day, as del Toro said, has forever changed the world. He said he wrote Pan's Labyrinth, set five years after Backbone, in response to the changes in the world post-9/11. At any rate, this was one of the films I was most looking forward to here at Toronto, and it was incredible. We'll have reviews up of the film later, as well as a video interview with Guillermo del Toro, so keep checking back!