Details

Release year: 2017

Storyline

At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.

Top credits

Directors

Guillermo del Toro

Writers

Cast

Sally Hawkins — Elisa Esposito
Octavia Spencer — Zelda Fuller
Michael Shannon — Richard Strickland
Doug Jones — Amphibian Man

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Awards

4 wins & 9 nominations

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Did you know

• When The Shape of Water (2017) screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017, the screening was held in the Elgin Theatre. The interior scenes of the theater in the film were shot in the Elgin Theatre, so as the audience was watching the film, they were seeing the same theater on-screen that they were sitting in.

• Director Guillermo del Toro said about Sally Hawkins, "Not only was she the first choice, she was the only choice. I wrote the movie for Sally. I wrote the movie for Michael [Shannon]. Sally is... I wanted the character of Elisa to be beautiful, in her own way, not in a way that is like a perfume commercial kind of way. That you could believe that this character, this woman would be sitting next to you on the bus. But at the same time she would have a luminosity, a beauty, almost magical, ethereal."

• Michael Shannon was in a Chicago bar, Old Town Ale House, the moment the film won Best Picture at the 90th Academy Awards. The bar's owner waited until after the ceremony was over to post a photo to Twitter of Shannon nonchalantly sitting at the bar alone with a pint of beer while watching the broadcast on the overhead TV set.