Madeline Sharafian

Madeline Sharafian (birthname: Madeline Michael Sharafian) is an animation director, writer, and storyboard artist whose work has been mainly concentrated at Disney/Pixar Studios. Sharafian made her first animated short film, Omelette (2013), while she was studying animation at the California Institute of the Arts, and was then an animator and cel painter on director/writer Trevor Jimenez’s animated short film, Weekends (2017).

Sharafian then joined Pixar Studios, where she worked as a story artist on Coco (2017) as well as that movie’s preliminary short film, Dante’s Lunch (2017), and with Disney/Pixar’s short film directed and written by Kristen Lester, Purl (2018). Sharafian received her first Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film as director/writer/animator of Burrow (2020), which was screened in front of the theatrical presentation of Disney/Pixar’s Soul (2020).

Madeline Sharafian served as story artist of Disney/Pixar’s short film in the “SparksShorts” series, Twenty Something (2021), directed and written by Aphton Corbin, as well as the Disney/Pixar feature, Turning Red (2022), care of director/co-screenwriter/co-story writer Domee Shi and co-screenwriter/co-story writer Julia Cho, and which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature after receiving rave reviews during a release that was curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.

Sharafian served on Pixar’s Senior Creative Team for the massive hit sequel, Inside Out 2 (2024), while at the same time she stepped up to the director’s chair for the sci-fi adventure, Elio (2025), which was originally conceived and directed by Adrian Molina but was then taken over by Sharafian and co-director Shi, and which featured a voice cast including Yonas Kibreab (in the title role), Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly, Jameela Jamil, Brad Garrett, Shirley Henderson and Matthias Schweighöfer.