Short answer: As of July 2026, Guillermo del Toro does not support Israel. His public record on this runs the other way: since 2024 he has repeatedly aligned with pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel-policy campaigns in the film industry, including a Cannes "genocide" letter, a Venice pledge against Israeli film institutions, and a Gaza medical-aid charity auction.
What Guillermo Del Toro has actually said and done
- April 2024: Del Toro joined the Cinema for Gaza celebrity auction, donating six signed books (deluxe editions of "Gabinete de Curiosidades" and a making-of volume for "El Laberinto del Fauno"). The auction ran online from April 2 to April 12, 2024, and once final bids were tallied it raised roughly $316,000 for Medical Aid for Palestinians, a UK charity supporting Gaza, according to The Hollywood Reporter's initial coverage of del Toro's donation and a follow-up Hollywood Reporter report on the final total.
- May 16, 2025: At the Cannes Film Festival, del Toro signed an open letter, alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Juliette Binoche and more than 370 other actors and filmmakers, condemning the film industry's "silence" over what the letter called "genocide" in Gaza and referencing the killing of Gaza photojournalist Fatma Hassona. The signing was reported by the Times of Israel and confirmed by TheWrap.
- Late August 2025: Del Toro was among the signatories of the Venice4Palestine open letter, published August 23, 2025 ahead of that year's festival, which pledged not to screen films at, appear at, or otherwise work with Israeli film institutions the signatories described as "implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people." Signatory counts varied by outlet as more names were added in the following days, with later reports citing roughly 2,000 signatures. The letter was covered by IMDb (a Reuters wire reprint) and by Variety.
- September 8, 2025: A separate, broader industry pledge organized by the group Film Workers for Palestine committed thousands of signatories to boycott specific Israeli film institutions, including the Jerusalem Film Festival, Haifa International Film Festival, Docaviv, and TLVFest. Per the tracked signatory list on Wikipedia's page for Film Workers for Palestine, del Toro is not listed as a signatory of this specific institutional-boycott pledge, distinguishing it from the Cannes and Venice letters he did sign.
- December 2022: At a reception honoring del Toro's stop-motion film "Pinocchio," he remarked, "Every Mexican outside of Mexico is an ambassador of the culture of Mexico." That comment, reported by the Times of Israel, inspired a Manhattan synagogue leader to launch New York City's first Mexican Jewish Film Festival. Del Toro was the inspiration for the festival, not a Jewish participant in it, and there is no report of him being Jewish or having a personal Israel connection.
Where the Mexican Jewish Film Festival story fits in
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican filmmaker known for "Pan's Labyrinth," "The Shape of Water," and "Pinocchio," with no reported Jewish ancestry or personal ties to Israel. His 2022 remark about Mexican identity indirectly inspired a Mexican Jewish film festival in New York, but that story is about his cultural influence on someone else's project, not about his own identity or views on Israel. Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, del Toro has repeatedly put his name behind pro-Palestinian industry campaigns: the 2024 Cinema for Gaza charity auction benefiting a Palestinian medical-aid charity, the May 2025 Cannes open letter accusing Israel of "genocide" in Gaza, and the August 2025 Venice4Palestine letter pledging non-cooperation with Israeli film institutions. He does not appear on the tracked signatory list of the separate, larger September 2025 Film Workers for Palestine institutional-boycott pledge, so it would be inaccurate to say he joined every boycott campaign in the industry. But the pattern across his other actions is consistent. Coverage of these letters in the Times of Israel, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter consistently groups del Toro with figures such as Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, and Javier Bardem, not with pro-Israel voices in the industry. We found no report of him visiting Israel, praising it, or engaging with Israeli cultural institutions; that is based on the available English-language coverage rather than an exhaustive record.
The bottom line
Del Toro does not support Israel. He has publicly and repeatedly aligned with pro-Palestinian, Israel-critical film-industry campaigns since 2024: a Gaza medical-aid charity auction, the Cannes "genocide" letter, and the Venice4Palestine boycott-pledge letter. He does not appear to have signed the separate, larger September 2025 institutional-boycott pledge specifically, so his position should not be overstated as covering every anti-Israel campaign. But the overall public record is unambiguous and points in one direction.
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Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
