CALIFORNIA, USA — Yonas Kibreab, the Filipino-American who voices the title role in Disney/Pixar’s new animated film, Elio, looks forward to visiting the Philippines for the first time this year.
In his biggest break, Yonas, the son of Irene Gonzales Asuncion, a native of Quezon City, and Bemnet Kibreab, who hails from Eritrea, leads the voice cast of Elio, a space sci-fi comedy adventure.
The Los Angeles-born actor plays a space fanatic, lonely and misunderstood, even by his doting Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña), and dreams of being abducted by aliens.
When Elio’s yearning, fueled by his active imagination, comes true, his cosmic misadventure in the Communiverse, an interplanetary organization and a thriving space station, begins.
In Pixar’s always fascinating animation studio in Emeryville, California, Rappler recently met Yonas and the women filmmakers behind Elio – directors Domee Shi and Madeline “Maddie” Sharafian and producer Mary Alice Drumm.
Adrian Molina also directed the film with a voice cast that includes Brad Garrett (Lord Grigon) and Remy Edgerly (Glordon).
Elio marks the latest in Yonas’ growing list of animation credits — Merry Little Batman; Slumberkins; Pupstruction; Ada Twist, Scientist; and Bat Family. In Viktor Lakisov’s upcoming Pinocchio, he also voices the title role.
In Mateo Messina’s Reimagined, a live-action musical that’s also coming up, Yonas costars with Josh Holloway, Paula Patton, and Joel McHale. Yonas sings two songs in the film where he plays the protagonist, Felix, who is coping with the loss of his mom.
“Yonas is excited to visit the Philippines for the first time in December 2025,” Bemnet, whom Rappler also met at Pixar, wrote in our email interview a few days later.
“He is planning to visit his extended family and visit the amazing beaches of the Philippines.”
The proud father shared that Yonas started acting in 2018 at the age of eight. “Yonas’ manager, Kim Matuka, recommended that he tries voice acting. She introduced Yonas to a voice-over (talent) agency. After getting an agent, Yonas started auditioning for voice-over projects.”
Yonas, also via email, recalled the day he learned he bagged the pivotal Elio part and his first Pixar movie: “I will never forget the moment when my dad received the call from Mary Alice Drumm, the producer of Elio.”
It’s a well-earned opportunity since he had been recording the scratch or the temporary voice recording of Elio used in the early stages of the animated movie’s production.
Yonas added, “Before receiving the call, I had been working on Elio for over a year as a scratch voice actor. The team must have loved my work because they offered me the role of Elio.”
“When the call came, my dad and I were driving to an audition. He decided to pull into a strip mall to take the call from Mary Alice. When I got the news, I was super stoked and I was screaming in the car!”
The young actor, who has an older sister, Isabel, also born in LA, said he’s really thankful.
“I was so grateful and it felt so rewarding that all my hard work paid off,” he said
“As we were about to drive away from the strip mall, my dad and I realized that we were parked right in front of a restaurant called Olga’s (Zoe’s character) Kitchen! The moment felt like the Communiverse was giving me a sign!”
At Pixar, which always comes across as an artists’ playground, not a workplace, at each visit, Rappler had a chance to do a mock voice recording session with Yonas.
“It was so much fun! I hope that we meet again,” Yonas gushed.
For Yonas, recording actual Elio lines for the film was a thrill, not a job.
“Every time I was at the Pixar campus to record was very memorable,” he said. “To walk into the recording studio where all the great Pixar movies were recorded brings you a special feeling. I always pinch myself because it is such a surreal experience.”
The long, curly-haired actor shared, “Also, I was so fortunate to be directed by three amazing Pixar directors who each had a unique directing approach. I learned so much from them. They also made working in the recording booth super fun and memorable.”
On collaborating with Domee, Maddie, and Adrian, he said, “It was such a privilege to work with three incredible Pixar directors on one movie. The directors brought their own personalities and approaches to directing, so I was quickly able to get comfortable working with all three.”
“I initially started working with Adrian and he really helped me get to a place where I was able to explore the emotional part of Elio’s story and also really understand the backstory of Elio’s life. As Maddie and Domee came onboard, we worked on the adventurous and rebellious side of Elio.”
Sounding like a veteran actor at 15 (he turns 16 on June 16), Yonas commented, “Elio is a classic Pixar movie that will have audiences laughing, crying, and on the edge of their seats, so it was important that my portrayal had the full range.”
Women in animation
In a press conference held at the animation studio’s Steve Jobs Theater, Domee, Maddie, and Mary Alice fielded the visiting journalists’ questions. Rappler asked about the strides women have made in the animation industry.
Maddie, whose Burrow earned a 2021 Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film, replied, “For me personally, I don’t think I would be in this role at all if it wasn’t for Domee. Watching her make Turning Red — I was a story lead on that movie — and just watching her totally be herself, making exactly what she wanted to see.”
“It just gave me the confidence that I can really just be the person that I am in a leadership role. I really wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Domee.”
Domee, who set trailblazing feats — the first woman to direct a Pixar short film and the first woman of color to win a Best Animated Short Film Oscar (2019), both for Bao, and the first woman and Asian woman to solo direct a Pixar feature, Turning Red — said, “It’s such an honor to be on this film and to work with such an amazing crew of women, like Mary Alice and Maddie.”
“I’m so grateful to Pixar for giving us these opportunities to tell these stories and putting all this trust in us. I want to be a support system for the upcoming female filmmakers.”
Domee pointed out, “I also want to pay back all of the amazing trust and support I’ve gotten from a lot of the male leadership here, too. Like Pete Docter — he’s an executive producer on this movie.”
“He has been my mentor and champion ever since I was his story artist on the first Inside Out. It’s really cool that we’re at this stage in the film industry and in animation where you’re seeing a lot more female voices in the industry. It’s awesome.”
“We are lucky at Pixar,” cited Mary Alice, whose producing credits include Coco, Brave, and Elemental. “I often say as an audience member, I do look out in the world and want to see more women directors.”
“Domee was the director of Turning Red with a full women leadership show, and we even have Claudia (Chung), our visual effects supervisor, so there’s just a lot of great women and men leaders. Everyone loves working with Domee and Maddie because they’re just such great directors.”
When a journalist brought up how the theme of aliens is unexpectedly relevant “in today’s political climate,” where some regimes are increasingly antagonistic towards immigrants, especially because they are “different,” Maddie answered, “From the very beginning, one of the most important character dynamics is between Elio and Glordon.”
“When Elio first meets him, he’s terrifying. His mouth is full of crazy teeth and he doesn’t sound like what Elio expects.”
The filmmaker, who is proud of her Armenian heritage, pointed out, “But once Elio takes the time to actually learn how to connect with him instead of pushing him away the way that he always pushed away the kids that he met on earth, then there’s this beautiful connection.”
She continued, “That was the nugget that we wanted Elio to learn throughout the film — that at the beginning, he meets kids who aren’t like him and he immediately assumes, you’re not like me, you could never possibly understand me.”
The filmmaker brought up Zoe’s character, from Elio’s mistaken perspective: “And that Olga isn’t like me, and she could never understand me. He creates a barrier without even giving anyone a chance, without even attempting to reach out.”
“And it’s thanks to Glordon and all of these aliens who are so different and who understand him immediately that he starts to come around to the idea that the connections that he’s looking for could be right in front of him. That was always something inherent in the concept of humans, aliens, and loneliness.”
Citing that many sci-fi movies “show aliens in this very negative light,” Domee said, “They don’t look like us. They want to hurt us. They want to abduct us and experiment on us.”
“But I love how this movie shows the wonderful world of the Communiverse. How there’s this aspirational utopia where species of different backgrounds, cultures, shapes, and sizes can all live and work together.”
She stressed, “It’s such a beautiful image of the future. I strive for that. I’m also kind of an alien, too, in some ways.”
Asked to elaborate on how she relates to Elio’s theme of aliens and being different, Domee began, “Maddie and I really bonded over this movie in that both of us have always felt like Elio at some point in our lives. We were the weird kids in school.”
“I was the vice president of the anime club in high school. My best friend was the president. There were only two members. Us.”
Finding kinship in Elio’s character, Domee shared, “And every day, I dreamed and hoped of going to a place where everyone understood me and the things that I was obsessed with and liked.”
“When we were directing this movie, the moment where Elio gets beamed up and he arrives in the Communiverse, for us that felt a lot like going to animation school or coming to Pixar.”
“Like going through the gates, looking around us and realizing, oh my gosh, everyone’s weird like me! Finally finding that acceptance and belonging.”
She emphasized, “That was our North Star as we were developing Elio as a character, as this boy who’s just obsessed, hell bent on just getting to this one place. But maybe inadvertently ignoring and pushing away all of the potential connections around him. That very much felt like us.”
Domee, who was born in China and moved at age two with her parents to Canada, shared, “The Communiverse does also feel like Pixar in some way. We also have an international cast and crew. And they all came together from all walks of life and were all kinds of weirdos and nerds in their own way. And we made this one thing together.”
As for the filmmakers’ first memories of being smitten with animation, Maddie replied first: “I remember it very clearly. I watched Spirited Away for the first time. I was around the age of Chihiro (the film’s protagonist) when I saw it, so I was also a very whiny, annoying little girl.”
“And watching Chihiro change, I just remember realizing that the way she was drawn, because it was 2D, hadn’t changed over the course of the film. But the way that I saw her change as she grew over the course of the movie, I’d never really experienced film in a really artform way until that point.”
Maddie continued, “I remember being at home, staring out the window, having like a brain-exploding moment, realizing that I had changed as well because I’d watched the film. That experience of realizing what just sitting in a dark room for an hour and a half can do to a person.”
“For me, it was the very first VHS tape that my parents bought when we first immigrated to Canada,” Domee recounted. “We bought a VHS player. My parents bought Aladdin on VHS, and I popped it in.”
“I was mesmerized. I kept rewinding and watching [the scene] ‘Friend Like Me.’ The music and all of it just hit me in a similar way as Spirited Away did.”
Grinning as she recalled, Domee said, “I kept rewinding and watching it closer and closer (to the screen) because I also didn’t realize a drawing could be so handsome. I totally had a crush on Aladdin. I would pause it. I would open my sketchbook and I would try to draw him over and over again.”
Mary Alice, for her part, recalled, “We’re such nerds because I can remember where I was when I saw both of those movies. But I’ll say Star Wars. I’m older. My family got there. We were in line.”
“My dad came from work, and again, to be in a dark room for two hours with people to see this thing that just took you so far away — sci-fi.”
“I also love any movie that’s asking what it is to be human, like pushing us. That’s where the Pixar movies, when we do that well, that’s what I think is the most exciting.” – Rappler.com
