Jan Pinkava

Jan Pinkava has been a leader in animation storytelling for over thirty years.

At Pixar he wrote and directed 1997 Oscar-winning short film Geri's Game and was the creator and co-director of Pixar's Oscar-winning 2007 feature Ratatouille.

At Google, he was co-founder and Creative Director of the renowned Google Spotlight Stories project; working with leading technologists, artists and directors to create new forms of interactive storytelling for film, mobile and VR. The work won many prizes, including the first Emmy for outstanding innovation in interactive storytelling, and an Oscar nomination.

In June of 2023 Jan became Director of the Animationsinstitut Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, one of Europe’s leading schools for Animation, VFX and Interactive Media. He is learning German. Slowly.