Turning Red: Director Domee Shi Reveals The True Story And Cinematic Inspiration Behind The Disney-Pixar Film

Turning Red is the new Pixar animated film written and directed by director Domee Shi, on her directorial debut, after having worked for years as a storyboard editor and animated illustrator on the Inside Out, Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2 team. Skipping theatrical release and arriving directly on the Disney+ platform from March 11, 2022, Turning Red has been acclaimed by audiences and critics alike and like any self-respecting Pixar film, it is enchanting viewers around the world. Domee Shi, winner of the Oscar for Best Short Film for the sweetest Bao, has explored in Turning Red and, in part also in Bao, a theme he has always wanted to tell.

Turning Red The True Story Behind The Film

Turning Red ‘s Theme

At the heart of the film Turning Red, the relationship between Mei and Ming, a conflicting mother-daughter relationship. Director Domee Shi said it’s a kind of relationship that she knows, she has experienced firsthand and always wanted to explore on screen. “In 2017, when I was promoting the short film Bao, many people kept asking me why the protagonist of the short was a boy and therefore the story specifically tells the mother-child relationship,” said the director. “I remember replying that it was a short film, I only had eight minutes, if I wanted to explore the mother-daughter relationship I would need an entire feature film.“. An answer that can be defined prescient, because at that time Shi was preparing to present 3 different feature film concepts. “All my ideas were about young women, teenagers facing the difficult transition to adulthood. It was something I always wanted to tell” continued Domee Shi. “The idea behind Turning Red was the most personal to me, because I took inspiration from my relationship with my mother.”

In fact, Mei shares a number of aspects with creator Domee Shi, but her beliefs start to collapse when she feels torn between being the respectful daughter of her mother and becoming herself. “Like Mei, I am an only child ,” says Shi. “I have always been very attached to my parents, especially my mother, since my father was often away on business. Most of the time it was just the two of us, we really did a lot of things together: we made the journey to her to work and I to school in downtown Toronto which was very long, both outward and return, and many trips and holidays where my father wasn’t there and so it was just me and my mother. But then, like all children, I started growing, changing, getting passionate about anime and comics and preferring to go out with my friends. I remember that even my passion for animation seemed strange to her at first, she didn’t understand why I was obsessed with these fictional characters with huge eyes and colored hair, “Shi recalls laughing. “It was as if I were coming in one direction, but my duty and my loyalty to my mother dragged me to another place “.

Mei & Domee Shi

Unlike Mei, Shi has never felt that she has transformed into a giant red panda, which, metaphorically, is a time of transition for everyone. “For Mei, the red panda is like a magical spark that triggers a conflict,” says Shi. “Until that transformation, Mei thinks she knows everything, that she has understood how the world is and how it goes. And we all thought that, in a moment of our life, before waking up one day and realizing that suddenly we no longer know who we are and what we want. We used the red panda as a metaphor for all those frightening, embarrassing and disturbing changes we go through between childhood and adolescence. More specifically, we wanted to explore the various nuances of relationships between parents and children, especially Asians, to also address how change is affected by intergenerational conflicts. Turning Red is a funny and surreal film, but deep down it’s the story of a mother and daughter who finally embrace change in all its forms, even if it means saying goodbye to the relationship they once had.“.

Domee Shi’s story is personal, but also universal. Turning Red ‘s theme, during the creation phase, led each member present to tell their experiences, of parents and children. “Those of us who are parents have shared their bad parenting moments, talking openly about everything, daily failures and successes. For example, producer Lindsey Collins, a mother of three, often said: We’re not too hard on this mom, moms don’t always know what they’re doing. “Shi has always stressed how grateful she was for having the opportunity to tell a story like Turning Red, especially since she would have wanted a movie like this very much when she was Mei’s age. “It would have been great to see a movie that said that part of my life that I was living could be messy, scary or embarrassing, but that it would be okay anyway, that I wasn’t alone and that I would survive.”