Guillermo del Toro on the Rome Film Festival red carpet for 'Rise of the Guardians'

Guillermo del Toro at Rome Film Festival

Film director Peter Ramsey collected the Vanity Fair International Award for Cinematic Excellence for the animated movie Rise of the Guardians at the 7th Rome Film Festival yesterday evening. He was joined on the red carpet before the Out of Competition screening by the movie's executive producer Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro, producers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Christina Steinberg, as well as three of Santa's elves from the movie!

I'm a huge admirer of the work of Guillermo del Toro so had arrived early along the red carpet armed with my Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy DVDs in the hope that I could get at least one of them signed by the man himself. The organisers of the event were clearly on a tight schedule and kept steering del Toro away from the public, but the director was clearly enjoying meeting his fans and broke ranks at every opportunity, going back to sign more and more autographs, laughing and joking the whole while, and signaling his exasperation every time he was dragged away for a press interview or photo call. At the strict admonition from one of the organisers that only one autograph per person was allowed I invited Mr del Toro to choose which DVD he would like to sign – with a big smile, and to my enormous delight, he graciously signed both!

To get a taste of the atmosphere along the Rise of the Guardians red carpet watch the video below (or click here to watch on YouTube).