Looking for something to do with the family this summer?
Pixar’s new short Bao will debut in theaters this Friday along with its highly anticipated sequel Incredibles 2 which promises to be the summer’s family hit.
Bao is the story of an empty-nester Chinese mom who fills the void by making a steamed bao which magically comes to life.
It’s directed by Chinese Canadian Dominee Shi who describes herself as a “good Chinese dumpling daughter.” She is a product of an “overprotective” Chinese mom and the story of Bao was inspired by her mother.
“I was definitely the dumpling,” she told The Star. “I feel like I still am. I grew up as the only child so my parents — especially my mom — were super overprotective. She always treated me like her precious little dumpling and I just wanted to tell the story about it.”
You can watch an interview with her below:
Shi is the first female director of a Pixar short. She says the shorts are a “good training ground” for new leadership and is now currently in the early stages of development for a potential feature for Pixar.
To give you an idea of how long the whole process takes, her short Bao was first approved by Pixar in 2015.
Shi even brought her mother into the studio to bake baos for the staff as part of the film’s development.
It was “really important for the animators and effects artists and everyone on the crew to kind of see every single step that it took for her to make those dumplings, so we could record her actions and replicate them on the big screen as accurately as possible,” she told The Eater.
“We worked closely with our production designer, Rona Liu, who is Chinese American. We both designed the look of the characters and the world to reflect our own lives and relatives, moms and grandmas. We’re also both inspired by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata of Studio Ghibli.”
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