Soul

Pete Docter is the Oscar®-winning director of Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out, and Chief Creative Officer at Pixar Animation Studios. He is currently directing Disney and Pixar’s upcoming feature film Soul with producer Dana Murray and co-director Kemp Powers, which is set to release November 20, 2020.

Starting at Pixar in 1990 as the studio’s third animator, Docter collaborated and help develop the story and characters for Toy Story, Pixar’s first full-length animated feature film, for which he also was supervising animator. He served as a storyboard artist on A Bug’s Life, and wrote initial story treatments for both Toy Story 2 and WALL•E. Aside from directing his three films, Docter also executive produced Monsters University and Academy Award®-winning Brave.

Docter’s interest in animation began at the age of eight when he created his first flipbook. He studied character animation at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California, where he produced a variety of short films, one of which won a Student Academy Award®. Those films have since been shown in animation festivals worldwide and are featured on the Pixar Short Films Collection Volume 2. Upon joining Pixar, he animated and directed several commercials, and has been nominated for eight Academy Awards® including Best Animated Feature-winners Up and Inside Out and nominee Monsters, Inc., and Best Original Screenplay for Up, Inside Out and WALL•E. In 2007, Up also was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Kemp Powers began at Pixar Animation Studios in August 2018. Powers grew up in Brooklyn, NY. He attended both Howard University and the University of Michigan. Prior to Pixar, Powers was an award-winning playwright, television and film screenwriter, and journalist. His play One Night in Miami… received three L.A.Drama Critics Circle Awards and four NAACP Theatre Awards, and was nominated for the 2017 Laurence Olivier Award for best new play. He adapted it into a feature film, which is being directed by Academy Award®-winning actress Regina King. He was a writer for the television show Star Trek: Discovery and has toured nationally as a storyteller for the Peabody Award-winning series The Moth.

He resides in Los Angeles and Emeryville, California.

Dana Murray joined Pixar Animation Studios in June 2001 as a desk production assistant on Finding Nemo. She served as the art and technology coordinator on several short films,including Boundin’, One Man Band and Lifted. Murray was a lighting coordinator for Cars and held a variety of department manager positions on the Academy Award®-winning feature films Ratatouille, Up, and Brave. Murray served as the production manager for the Academy Award-winning film Inside Out, and most recently produced her first short film, LOU, which released in front of Cars 3 and was nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar®. She is the producer on Soul with director Pete Docter and co-director Kemp Powers.

Raised in Placerville, California, Murray attended Sonoma State University. She resides in Oakland, California,with her husband, their two girls and dog, Gracie.

Simone Griffin is a 16-year-old mixed-race filmmaker living in El Cerrito, California. She currently attends Oakland School for the Arts in the Digital Media Sub Pathway with a focus on directing and editing. For her 6th birthday, Simone received a Flip video camera as a gift and has loved directing and filmmaking ever since. At the same age, she taught herself the program Adobe Premiere Elements to edit her films, as editing continues to be her favorite step of the filmmaking process. Now in high school, Simone has made five independent short films, two documentaries, and edited two episodes of OSA: Off the Table, (Oakland School for the Arts’ “Tiny Desk” spinoff, linked in her website.) She sometimes dabbles in photography, digital drawing, 3D modeling, and music production as well. Simone’s favorite pastime is playing video games, as she is also greatly intrigued by video game storytelling and direction. Some of her other loves include iced tea, fashion, music, and cats.