Turning Red

EVERYTHING changed for director Domee Shi at Pixar in 2022. She released her first feature, ‘Turning Red,’ the semi-autobiographical, anime-inspired, coming-of-age comedy that’s an Oscar contender for Best Animated Feature.

She was also promoted to creative vice president, becoming the first woman director to join Pixar’s vaunted braintrust.

It’s all part of the new culture of female empowerment, diversity, and personal storytelling at the studio, led by chief creative officer Pete Docter.

Docter mentored Shi as a story artist on ‘Inside Out’ and then on her appetising, Oscar-winning short ‘Bao.’ That paid dividends when he greenlit ‘Turning Red’ and entrusted Shi as sole director.

Her quirky tale of dorky 13-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang), who transforms into a giant red panda when she hits puberty, contains an artistic vision and controlled chaos uncharacteristic of a first-time director. The challenge was telling the story of being a Chinese Canadian tween in the early 2000s with a cohesive visual style that represented Shi’s love of drawing, anime, boy bands, Disney, French comics, and Edgar Wright movies.

“Great films come from a personal place for the filmmaker: an experience and memory and emotion,” she said.

“I wanted to tap into what it was like for me and for a lot of people when they woke up one day and didn’t recognise their body or their emotions or why they went from hating their mom one second, then worshiping them the next.

“Film art and drawing has always been a way of processing and working out my own feelings.

“And this film was also a way of helping others who are having issues with their parents or their kids.”