Dee Rees

Diandrea Rees (born February 7, 1977) is an American screenwriter and director. She is known for her feature films Pariah, Bessie (2015), Mudbound (2017), and The Last Thing He Wanted (2020). Rees has also written and directed episodes for television series including Empire, When We Rise, and Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams.

Rees is the first African-American woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Mudbound. She has also received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, and won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Miniseries or TV Film for Bessie.

Rees received a United States Artists Fellowship in 2011.

Early life and education Rees was born in 1977 in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father was a police officer and also worked in marketing and brand management. While working for Dr. Scholl's, Rees worked on set for a commercial and she realized she enjoyed the creation of film content. This led her to pursue film school.

Career Rees' first full-length film was a documentary, Eventual Salvation (2009), which aired on the Sundance Channel. The film follows her American-born, 80-year-old grandmother, Amma, as she returns to Monrovia, Liberia to rebuild her home and community. She had barely escaped the devastating Liberian Civil War only a decade earlier.

Rees completed development and filming of her debut feature film, Pariah, which she has described as semi-autobiographical. In graduate school Rees interned for Spike Lee, whom she got to executive produce the film. It premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Lisa Schwartzman of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "In her fearless, world-here-I-am! debut Pariah, writer-director Dee Rees demonstrates, with simplicity and verve, that there's no substitute for authenticity". Pariah explores the complexities of religion, politics and socioeconomic class within and surrounding a Black family. The short film version of Pariah was initially a thesis project done by Dee Rees in film school. It was difficult to receive funding for the feature film, and the process took about five years to reach completion. The transition from short film to feature film meant it needed to be more accessible for a wider audience in order to make money.

Pariah has been compared to the written work of Audre Lorde, specifically Zami: a New Spelling of My Name. The film was well received by critics.

It also won four Primetime Emmy Awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. Rees was nominated for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special and Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special.

Together with Virgil Williams, Rees wrote Mudbound, a period drama adapted from the 2008 novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan. Rees also directed the film, starring Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, and Mary J. Blige. After being shown at Sundance in 2017, Mudbound became the highest purchase of the festival, being bought for $12.5 million by Netflix. The film tells the story of two families in the Mississippi Delta in the 1940s. The McAllan family is white and their neighbors, the Jacksons, are black. Mudbound tells a story of racism and race relations that continue to be played out today. The movie explores whiteness and the privilege associated with it, while comparing and contrasting the experiences of white and Black people of the period. The nomination of Mary J. Blige for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Mudbound made Rees the first African-American woman to direct a film for which an actor or actress was nominated for an Academy Award.

A lesser-known project of Rees' is the show Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, where Rees was given the chance to engage with the many emotions looming around the election of Donald Trump, and manipulate them within a sci-fi context, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Rees is also attached to write and direct An Uncivil War for FilmNation. In 2018, Rees was nominated for NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing.

Rees directed The Last Thing He Wanted, based upon the novel of the same name by Joan Didion, which stars Anne Hathaway and Willem Dafoe. The film was distributed by Netflix.

Rees directed multiple episodes of the Apple TV+ war miniseries Masters of the Air.

Rees is currently set to write and direct MGM's feature film adaptation of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. She will be working alongside the film's producers, Irwin Winkler An original script, the film is a musical fantasy about a young musician in search of stardom. With the addition of her breakout film, Pariah (2011), Criterion has acknowledged its need for the addition of more female directors and director of color, and has vowed to bring more diversity to light. and the cinematographer Bradford Young's organic style on the television show Friday Night Lights.

Personal life Rees is a lesbian, and she described Pariah as semi-autobiographical. On National Coming Out Day in 2011, in an interview with BlackEnterprise.com, Rees discussed her coming out experience. When she came out her parents weren't accepting. They sent her emails, cards, letters and Bible verses. Rees sees Pariah as semi-autobiographical because she can relate to the main concepts of the film.

Since at least 2017, Rees has been in a relationship with poet and writer Sarah M. Broom. They are now married and currently reside in Harlem.

Rees, who is of African American descent, incorporates her family's history, specifically her own grandmother's, in her 2017 film Mudbound where American violence and racism are more relevant to the lives of all citizens and a marker of each individual's identity.

Filmography Short film Year TitleDirectorWriter 2005 Orange Bow 2007 Pariah 2009 Colonial Gods

Feature film Year TitleDirectorWriter 2011 Pariah 2017 Mudbound 2020 The Last Thing He Wanted

Television Year TitleDirectorWriter Notes 2015 Bessie TV movie Empire Episode "Without a Country" 2017 When We Rise 2 episodes 2018 Electric Dreams Episode "Kill All Others" 2020 Space Force 2 episodes 2022 Upload Episode "Welcome Back, Mr. Brown" 2023 Saint X Episode "A Lovely Nowhere", also executive producer 2024 Masters of the Air Directed 2 episodes, wrote 1 episode Criminal 4 episodes

Awards and nominations