Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Set in fascist Italy, del Toro's retelling of the Pinocchio story transforms the classic fable into a meditation on obedience, mortality, and what it means to be human. Geppetto, consumed by grief after losing his son Carlo, carves a new boy from a pine tree — and a wood sprite brings it to life. Shot in painstaking stop-motion over years of production, the film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Its inclusion in the Criterion Collection marks a rare recognition of stop-motion animation as high art.

Spoiler-free context and starting points.