Dee Rees

An alumna of New York University’s graduate film program and a 2008 Sundance Screenwriting and Directing Lab Fellow, Dee Rees is a writer-director who has made a significant impact on American and LGBT cinema. Her first full-length film, a documentary titled Eventual Salvation, aired on the Sundance Channel in 2009. Her subsequent feature film, Pariah, premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, exploring complex themes of religion, politics, and socioeconomic class within a Black family. Pariah was honored with the Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Competition “Excellence in Cinematography” Award (Bradford Young) and picked up by Focus Features. The film was awarded the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards, the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director, and the Outstanding Independent Motion Picture Award at the NAACP Image Awards, among others.

Before embarking on the production of the full-feature film, Rees initially took the first act of the Pariah script and directed it as a short film for her graduate thesis film project at NYU. In 2007, the short film played at 40 film festivals around the world, winning numerous accolades, including the Audience Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Rees first met Spike Lee at NYU as a professor, and he quickly became an active mentor to her. She served as an intern on Spike’s films Inside Man and When the Levees Broke and Spike was an Executive Producer on the feature version of Pariah.

In 2015, Rees directed the critically acclaimed film Bessie, starring Queen Latifah as the iconic singer, Bessie Smith. The film won four Primetime Emmy Awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. Rees' writing and directing brilliance earned her nominations for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Directing. Following Bessie's success, Rees wrote and directed the film Mudbound in 2017, which told the story of two families in the Mississippi Delta in the 1940s. Mudbound was bought for $12.5 million by Netflix, marking the highest purchase of the Sundance Film Festival that year. The film's screenplay, co-written by Rees and Virgil Williams, led to Rees becoming the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Rees continued her successful career by directing the film The Last Thing He Wanted in 2020, based on the novel by Joan Didion, starring Anne Hathaway and Willem Dafoe. She also directed her TV episodes for "Empire" and "When We Rise," alongside episodes of "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams." Currently, Rees is set to write and direct the MGM feature film adaptation of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" and is directing multiple episodes of the Apple TV+ war miniseries "Masters of the Air." In June 2021, she was announced as the first African-American woman to direct a Criterion film. Additionally, she's been developing her upcoming film, The Kyd's Exquisite Follies, a musical fantasy about a young musician in search of stardom.

Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Rees is strongly influenced by her own experiences as a Black lesbian filmmaker. Her work often explores themes of sexuality and the experiences of Black women. Rees is currently based in New York, married to the poet and writer Sarah M. Broom.