Oscar-nominated Turning Red helps girls 'embrace their messy imperfections,' says Domee Shi
The Canadian filmmaker says she’s heard ‘heartbreaking and amazing’ stories from the movie's young fans
If Turning Red wins an Oscar, that'll just be icing on the cake for Toronto filmmaker Domee Shi.
Shi's magical coming-of-age film, set in Toronto, about a Chinese Canadian girl's journey through puberty, friendship, fandom and intergenerational conflict, is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
This isn't Shi's first brush with the Academy Awards. In 2019, her film Bao won Best Animated Short.
But whether or not she takes home another statue during Sunday night's award show, Shi knows that Turning Red is already making an impact.
The director spoke to As it Happens host Nil Köksal about how she sold a movie about menstruation and boy bands to a room full of male movie execs, and the incredible stories she's heard from the film's young fans. Here is part of that conversation.
What do you wish you would have known going to the Oscars as a nominee the first time around that you know now?
To go easy on the champagne. They offer it, like, everywhere you turn.
The first time I was just trying to be polite and I just took every glass that was offered to me. And that's why I don't remember much of the Oscar night. [laughs]
So many people daydream about accepting an Oscar or winning an award in their field. In that moment, how did the reality compare with the daydream for you?
I honestly didn't even let myself daydream about the moment, because you just never know, right?
I was totally content with the idea of not winning. So then when it did happen, it was kind of surreal. And I think I was in autopilot more than anything else.
But, you know, it's also not like what you really even think about when you're making a movie. When I was making Bao, when I was making Turning Red, you don't think about awards.
And yet it's such an integral part of it at the very end, because it is the moment where you get to celebrate the movie, celebrate the crew's hard work and, like, really share this thing that we all made together and that we're so proud of.
[In your] acceptance speech [you said]: "To all of the nerdy girls out there who hide behind their sketchbooks, don't be afraid to tell your stories to the world. You're going to freak people out. But you'll probably connect with them, too. And that's an amazing feeling to have." How do you think your work freaks people out?
I pitched the movie as this, like, unfiltered, weird and unique take on a girl going through magical puberty. And from the very beginning, I said I'm not going to hold back from all of the elements and themes and ideas that are connected with puberty. Of course, we're going to show pads. Of course, we're going to talk about girls and their emotions and their horniness and their feelings.
I kind of just get a thrill out of seeing audiences react that way, especially to things that I feel like we all know and that should be normalized too. I just think it's so funny that a scene of a mom running into a bathroom to help her daughter with an armful of pads is controversial.
All of the pads. All of the sizes. Daytime, nighttime. And then also at school, though. Like, the cringe moments are so relatable, and so—
Visceral.
So visceral. That's the perfect word for it. When you were pitching it, though, I read that you said: "I'm going to sneak this through." [You were] speaking to a panel of people — men, older men — who don't know any of this, these experiences. So how did they react? How did you sneak it through?
From the very first screening, and having the mostly male execs at the time, sitting in the audience and feeling everyone's visceral reaction … everyone was just hiding behind their hands. Everyone was screaming, laughing, like, yelling.
That was just something the execs couldn't really ignore. You know, it's proof that it's working. Whatever we're doing in this movie is working — as uncomfortable as it might be for some of them.
It absolutely worked. What have you heard, I wonder, from young girls around [protagonist] Mei's age about what that movie has meant?
Oh man. I get so many handwritten letters from young girls who are dealing with the exact same issues that Mei deals with in the movie.
This one girl … was saying how … she was really struggling with her relationship with her mom…. As her grades were slipping, she was worried that her mom wouldn't love her as much anymore, wouldn't care about her as much anymore. Watching the movie really helped her kind of process her changing relationship with her mother — like, no longer being that perfect little daughter to her mom — but also understanding that her mom still loves her, and that she's more than just a perfect little girl.
It's just heartbreaking and amazing … just to see how much these girls are healed by and seen by this movie. And adults, too. I feel like a lot of moms and dads come up to us and thank us for this movie, for starting a lot of important conversations in their households about a variety of different topics.
I wish we had this when I was Mei's age. I could relate on so many levels.... And Toronto, of course. Why was it so important to you to make sure that it was set in the real world of your own childhood?
I have so much fondness for Toronto ... and especially the immigrant communities in Toronto, like Chinatown, like the South Asian communities.
I feel like a lot of people in the world don't know the type of Canada that I grew up with. And this was my opportunity to show them what Canada looked like through my eyes growing up as a tween — that it's diverse, that it's full of different people, that it's not just, you know, lumberjacks and moose and Mounties.
It's wonderful to live in other places, but where you are [from] or where you grew up has importance too.
Yeah, definitely.
Our movie's about this girl turning into a giant red panda. There's a magical bamboo forest. There's a giant boy band stadium battle in act three.
But, like, having it take place in an actual city that's an actual place that you could visit really helped ground it in a level of authenticity and reality that made us feel like these characters were real, even though we saw them doing very fantastical things.
They felt very real, even though they were animated. And it takes place in 2000, the early aughts [with] lots of nostalgia there and retro stuff, for sure. But it still felt extremely current — and not just because of the boy band.
A lot of the issues that tweens deal with, like, it's just going to be something that we all deal with.
Growing up is always going to be messy, no matter what era … and I think it's important to continue to tell stories like this to kind of help guide the next generation of children, and especially girls, to kind of help them figure out who they are and embrace their messy imperfections.
Interview produced by Chris Trowbridge. Q&A edited for length and clarity.
