Domee Shi

Shi was born on 8 September 1989 She spent six months in Newfoundland before moving to Toronto, where she grew up learning about art from her father. She was influenced by her father, who had been a college professor of fine arts and a landscape painter in China. Shi took inspiration and guidance from her mother's personality when directing Bao During her childhood, Shi watched many Studio Ghibli and Disney films, which exposed her to Asian cinema and animation. As a high school student, Shi watched anime, read manga, and became the Vice President of her school's anime club. This became her first exposure to an environment of like-minded people that helped her establish a network with other artists. "I could follow artists, and I could email them. In the past, you'd have to be in California or know a guy who was friends with this other guy that worked at Disney or something," said Shi. Shi was motivated to enroll at Sheridan College because many of her favorite artists had attended there. ==Career==

After graduating, Shi worked briefly as a cartooning instructor with an emphasis on character design and comic book creation. having initially been turned down by the animation studio and others, such as Disney and DreamWorks. On her internship at Pixar and eventually full-time job, Shi states, "I felt that my voice was valued early on in my career, which is rare." Shi wrote an animated webcomic series titled My Food Fantasies in 2014, in which she drew "outlandish" situations involving food. Shi later said that she developed her interest in writing stories about food while making My Food Fantasies. The first feature film she worked on with Pixar was Inside Out (2015), on which she served as a storyboard artist. On her career as a Chinese Canadian female director, Shi says that through her work as a filmmaker, she strives for the industry to reach the point where people are identified first as artists, and second by gender and ethnicity, stating that it gets old fast when she gets asked how it feels to be an Asian woman. "My first identity is that I'm a nerd! I just wanted to make something that I could nerd out about with my colleagues and friends, and share with other nerdy people around the world." The eight-minute short debuted at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, where it preceded Incredibles 2 in theaters. Shi won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for Bao, becoming the first woman of color to win the award. On May 8, 2018, it was reported that Shi was directing a feature film at Pixar. On November 26, 2018, Shi confirmed that she was working on a film at the studio. Shi also said that the film was in early stages of development, with the story still being worked on, and that she was "really excited to play in this new 90-minute film format." It was originally scheduled to be released in theaters on March 11, 2022, but due to rising cases of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, it was instead released direct-to-streaming on Disney+ on the same date. Disney said Turning Red was the number one streaming title on Disney+, and in early April 2022, Pixar promoted Shi to vice president of creative, alongside Andrew Stanton, Peter Sohn and Dan Scanlon. With Turning Reds success, Shi has officially become the first woman to solo direct a film in Pixar's 36-year history. On June 12, 2024, Pixar's Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter revealed that Shi was working on Elio, set for release on June 13, 2025. In August 2024, Shi was officially confirmed to be directing the film alongside Madeline Sharafian, replacing original director Adrian Molina. Elio was Shi's next project before her next as-of-yet untitled original film. In 2026, it was reported that Shi's third original film would be a musical. ==Influences==

Shi is influenced by her father's art, as he was her art teacher while growing up. "Like, I asked him what he thought [of the film] and he said, 'I really liked it, but I also have notes for you.' And I was like, Ah, that's my classic dad," Shi said. Her parents, however, were her biggest influences when directing Bao. Shi notes that her mother's overprotectiveness towards her when she was young was the major inspiration for the animated short, and particularly for the ending, in which Shi says, "I wanted to use this short as a way to explore that relationship between an over-protective mom and a baby dumpling and show how the bittersweetness of letting something go even though you love it so much." For Turning Red, Shi was inspired by the teenage girl's experience in navigating adolescence and all the weirdness that comes with it, incorporating her own personal experiences and aspects of her hometown, Toronto. For the film, Shi was also inspired to include a more diverse cast, with an article by Vanity Fair stating as such: "Shi was also vigilant about creating a diverse cast of human characters to surround Mei, including her Chinese Canadian family and multicultural Asian friends." During production, Shi was also careful to avoid the trope of 'characters of color being turned into nonhuman forms' in Turning Red by giving the giant red panda that Mei turns into a metaphorical meaning. Shi says it's "a metaphor for all the messiness inside of her that wants to come out." Shi says that most of her ideas come from specific cultures around her. Because audiences started to appreciate other stories with different background and culture after ''Sanjay's Super Team and Coco'', Shi thinks it important to draw upon various sources and backgrounds in order to create uniqueness in film. ==Filmography==

Feature films Short films Television ===Disney+ Original Specials=== ==Awards and nominations==