International Women's Day: Turning Red Director Domee Shi on Being a Woman of Colour in the Industry

Pixar’s latest offering Turning Red has already created a wave for its sensible and humorous portrayal of the relationship of a teenager with her over-protective mom. The Domee Shi directorial ticks off many boxes like diversity in characters, normalising taboo topics like menstruation and showing healthy female friendships. For the Bao director, it was a lot of her own story coming to life on screen. In a press conference, she expressed, “The inspiration behind Turning Red just came from my own life growing up in the early aughts. A Chinese-Canadian, dorky, sassy, nerdy girl who thought she had everything under control. She was her mom’s good little girl, and then boom, puberty hit, and I was bigger, I was hairier, was hungry all the time. I was a hormonal mess, and I was fighting with my mom every other day. And making this film was kind of my chance to go back to that time.”

The film revolves around a Chinese-Canadian dorky teenager who is an overachiever and tries to seek validation from her mom at every point in her life. However, things change for her when, due to an ancestral blessing, she turns into a large Red Panda every time she is excited or angry.

Besides being an Academy Award Winning director for her film Bao, Domee is also the second woman to direct a movie at Pixar and the first one to do it solo. She shared her experience of being a woman of colour in the industry and how she ended up as a director. She said, “When I first started at Pixar, there were only four or five women in the story department, out of a department of 30 or 40. But we started having lunches together and kinda sharing stories. I remember this one lunchtime, where we all went around and said aloud our goals. And that was the first time that I actually said aloud, I want to direct.’ And then I was embarrassed, but everyone said yeah.”

Advising aspirant female directors in the industry to be with people that support and validate them, she continued, “It can feel so lonely being a woman, being a person of colour in this industry, that I think it’s important to find those colleagues, those allies to help you not feel alone as you struggle and work your way through this industry.”

Pixar and Disney’s Turning Red is helmed by a team of women filmmakers including the director, producer Lindsey Collins and Screenwriter Julia Cho. It stars the voices of Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Orion Lee, Ava Morse, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Hyein Park, Wai Ching Ho and James Hong. Turning Red is now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.

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