TURNING RED
PIXAR’S LATEST TEACHES THE IMPORTANCE OF LETTING OUT YOUR INNER PANDA
OUT MAR 11
STRANGE, EMBARRASSING THINGS happen in adolescence. Your body changes, your emotions go haywire, you… turn into a giant red panda?
Maybe that last part is only true for the hero of Pixar’s Turning Red. Its director, Domee Shi, is returning to a theme she first explored in the animation studio’s Oscar-winning short film Bao: the delicate bond between mother and child. As with Bao, in which a mother imagines her son as a soft bun she must protect always, the themes are semi-autobiographical. “After Bao, people asked, ‘Why isn’t the bao a girl?’” says Shi. “I said, ‘A short film cannot encapsulate the complexity of a Chinese mother-daughter relationship.’”