Pete Docter — Movies, Awards & Complete Filmography

The essay

Reading Pete Docter

Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.

Why this filmmaker matters

Pete Docter has 0 directed films in the Nutevio catalogue. Peter Hans Docter (born October 9, 1968) is an American filmmaker and animator who has served as Pixar's chief creative officer (CCO) since 2018. He has directed the company's animated films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020). From his nine Academy Award nominations, he is a record-three-time recipient of Best Animated Feature for Up, Inside Out and Soul. Docter has also won six Annie Awards from nine nominations, a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He describes himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons". Description above from the Wikipedia article Pete Docter, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Signature style

The recognisable elements are visual style, rewatchability, originality. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same eye, re-tuned for different registers. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is staged.

Legacy

Docter set terms other filmmakers now work against: the structures, the pacing and the refusal to explain. Awards bodies have often been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.