Domee Shi

Domee Shi (Chinese: 石之予, pinyin: Shí Zhīyǔ) is a Canadian animator, film director, screenwriter and storyboard artist renowned for breaking several gender barriers at Pixar Animation Studios. Born on 8 September 1989 in Chongqing, China, she immigrated to Canada at age two, spending a brief period in Newfoundland before settling in Toronto, where her father, a fine‑arts professor and landscape painter, nurtured her early artistic sensibilities. As an only child, Shi absorbed the vivid storytelling of Studio Ghibli and Disney, while her mother’s protective presence later inspired the emotional core of her acclaimed short Bao. During high school she became vice‑president of the anime club, contributed fan art to DeviantArt, and cultivated a network that guided her toward Sheridan College, a historic incubator for many animation luminaries. At Sheridan she majored in animation, graduating in 2011, and credited a course with Nancy Beiman for steering her toward storyboarding. After a brief stint teaching cartooning, Shi secured a three‑month internship at Pixar in 2011, eventually joining the studio full‑time as a storyboard artist on Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur, and Toy Story 4. Her skill earned her additional story duties on Incredibles 2 and culminated in her historic directorial debut with the eight‑minute short Bao (2018), which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and made her the first woman to direct a Pixar short. Building on that momentum, Shi directed Pixar’s feature Turning Red (2022), becoming the first woman with sole director credit on a Pixar feature and receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. In 2024 she embarked on her next feature, Elio (2025), collaborating with Madeline Sharafian, further cementing her reputation as a trailblazing storyteller who weaves personal cultural experiences into universally resonant narratives. Shi’s creative process frequently draws from her bicultural upbringing, blending Chinese familial dynamics with North‑American teenage anxieties, a synthesis evident in the multigenerational themes of Turning Red. She has spoken openly about wanting audiences to recognize artists first, rather than reducing them to gender or ethnicity, emphasizing her identity as a “nerd” passionate about food‑centric storytelling, a motif that originated in her 2014 webcomic My Food Fantasies. Beyond directing, Shi contributes to Pixar’s senior creative team and was promoted to vice president of creative in 2022, working alongside industry veterans such as Andrew Stanton and Peter Sohn. Her influence extends to mentoring emerging talent, encouraging diverse voices within the animation community, and advocating for authentic representation of Asian‑Canadian experiences on screen. As she develops Elio and an untitled future project, Shi continues to push the boundaries of animated storytelling, proving that personal authenticity and cultural specificity can resonate globally while reshaping the industry’s expectations of who can lead major studio productions.