Dee Rees

Dee Rees is an openly lesbian Black American filmmaker whose work centers on the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality with rare poetic force. She studied at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts under Spike Lee, who executive produced her debut feature Pariah (2011) — about a Black teenage girl in Brooklyn coming to terms with her lesbian identity — one of the most celebrated American indie debuts of the decade. She directed the HBO biopic Bessie (2015), starring Queen Latifah as blues legend Bessie Smith, which won four Primetime Emmy Awards and earned Rees Emmy nominations for directing and writing. Her breakthrough into mainstream prestige cinema came with Mudbound (2017), a sweeping drama about two families in postwar Mississippi, for which she became the first African-American woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.