‘Turning Red’ Director Domee Shi Finds Fresh Ideas by Trusting Her ‘Weird Gut’

thewrap.com:

billion minutes watched in its first week, in 2.5 million households. The movie tells the tale of Meilin (Rosalie Chiang), a Chinese-Canadian tween girl who is entering puberty and discovers that when she gets too excited, she turns into a giant red panda. (It’s an ancient family curse.) Featuring a remarkable visual style that draws inspiration from Japanese anime and millennial boy bands (the movie is set in 2002 Toronto), “Turning Red” is singular in the Pixar canon.

It toggles effortlessly between extreme goofiness and earnest thoughtfulness, even broaching the once unthinkably taboo topic of menstruation as well as a frank reckoning with inter-generational trauma. “We’re always encouraged through Pete [Docter, PIxar’s Chief Creative Officer] and through the creative leadership here to push the medium of animation with every film that we work on,” Shi said. “And I definitely had that in mind when we were making ‘Turning Red.’ Like, what haven’t we seen before in animation?

What themes haven’t we tackled yet? What kinds of characters have we not seen? What have we not seen 3-D do yet? All of those questions were definitely in our brains when we were making this movie.” Referring to the numerous women who made up the writing and producing team, she added: “It was helmed by a predominantly female leadership.

That’s pretty innovative and cool.”Shi was born in Chongqing, China, and immigrated to Canada as a child. Watching “Turning Red” connect with audiences, especially kids who look like her and perhaps harbor dreams of making movies, was an “awesome” experience for Shi. “Not that long ago, I was just a sweaty, nerdy, Asian animation student with big hopes and dreams, just drawing in my dorm room in cold Toronto,.