Pixar has a well-deserved reputation for dudes — movies focused on dudes (20 out of 24 feature films), movies directed by dudes (23 of 24), movies written by dudes (50 of 59 screenwriters). But the Disney-owned animation studio has been trying to evolve, largely because many of its own artists have demanded it.
"Get some ladies!” Domee Shi tells me in a recent interview. "Draw from different creative wells!”
Shi, who likens herself to a cat oscillating between "lazy and grrr,” arrived at Pixar as a storyboarding intern in 2011, when she was 22. She stayed on as a staff artist, contributing to films like "Inside Out” and "Incredibles 2.” In 2018, she became the first woman to direct a Pixar short. That eight-minute movie, "Bao,” about a dumpling that comes to life, giving an aging Chinese woman relief from empty nest syndrome, won Shi an Oscar — and put her on course to break an even bigger glass ceiling at Pixar.