Earlier this week, the Disney+ Original film from Pixar, “Turning Red”, was nominated for Best Animated Film at the 95th annual Oscar awards.

The film introduces Mei Lee (voice of Rosalie Chiang), a confident, dorky 13-year-old torn between staying her mother’s dutiful daughter and the chaos of adolescence. Her protective, if not slightly overbearing mother, Ming (voice of Sandra Oh), is never far from her daughter—an unfortunate reality for the teenager. And as if changes to her interests, relationships and body weren’t enough, whenever she gets too excited (which is practically ALWAYS), she “poofs” into a giant red panda!

“Turning Red” was directed by Domee Shi, who has previously won an Academy Award for her Pixar short “Bao”, and she recently shared with Deadline how she feels about the film getting a nomination at this year’s Oscars.

“I’m mostly over the moon and excited, but still kind of in shock. To be honest, with all of the crazy shit that’s been happening in California with the shootings, I’m still trying to process that, but also this amazing news that our film has gotten nominated and what it means for the Asian community and what it means for me to have this film that’s so personal be recognized by such a global audience.”

While the film is based on a Chinese Canadian family, Domee explained she is delighted the film appealed to a larger audience.

“I think that the most relatable aspect of this movie is that feeling that we’ve all had where we wake up one day and we don’t recognize our bodies. Like suddenly we shot up a couple feet and we grew a bunch of hair all over our bodies. We’re hungry all the time, we’re horny, we’re angry at our parents… I think that phenomenon resonated with everybody.”

During the interview, Domee also revealed she is currently working on another project for Pixar, but didn’t give away any details:

“All I can really say about it is it’ll be very me and will be very much inspired by my background, my culture, and the themes and ideas that I love talking about… I think with movies like ours and Everything Everywhere All at Once, it’s just really cool and really important to be see more of these stories in the media.”

“Turning Red” is available to stream now on Disney+.

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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