Diandrea Rees was born on February 7,1977 and is an American screenwriter and director.
30 Facts About Dee Rees
2.
Dee Rees is known for her feature films Pariah, Bessie, Mudbound, and The Last Thing He Wanted.
3.
Dee Rees is the first African-American woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Mudbound.
4.
Dee Rees's father was a police officer and her mother was a scientist at Vanderbilt University.
5.
Dee Rees went on to work under Spike Lee on his films Inside Man and When the Levees Broke.
6.
Dee Rees' first full-length film was a documentary, Eventual Salvation, which aired on the Sundance Channel.
7.
Dee Rees had barely escaped the devastating Liberian Civil War only a decade earlier.
8.
Dee Rees completed development and filming of her debut feature film, Pariah, which she has described as semi-autobiographical.
9.
In graduate school Dee Rees interned for Spike Lee, whom she got to executive produce the film.
10.
Dee 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.
11.
Together with Virgil Williams, Dee Rees wrote Mudbound, a period drama adapted from the 2008 novel of the same name by Hillary Jordan.
12.
Dee Rees used her grandmother's journal to help guide her process.
13.
Dee Rees says that by using this it was a way of interrogating her own personal history.
14.
Dee Rees used written text from the journal, a war ration book, and a photograph of her great grandmother, and each one was an inspiration for something in Mudbound.
15.
Dee Rees is attached to write and direct An Uncivil War for FilmNation.
16.
In 2018, Dee Rees was nominated for NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing.
17.
Dee 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.
18.
Dee Rees will be working alongside the film's producers, Irwin Winkler and Charles Winkler.
19.
In 2019, Dee Rees began work as writer and director for her upcoming film, The Kyd's Exquisite Follies.
20.
Dee Rees is working alongside producer Cassian Elwes, with singer-songwriter Santigold set to compose.
21.
In June 2021, Dee Rees was announced as the first African-American woman to direct a Criterion film.
22.
Dee Rees has said that she was inspired by the realistic directorial style of Cassavetes, and the cinematographer Bradford Young's organic style on the television show Friday Night Lights.
23.
Dee Rees cites her own life experiences in the protagonist of her newest project, The Kyd's Exquisite Follies.
24.
Dee Rees has said that her dissimilarity from much of Hollywood has only amplified the importance of translating her experience into her films.
25.
Still early in her career, Dee Rees has shown a large array of stylistic choices in her films in her exploration for her identity as a filmmaker.
26.
However, Dee Rees has been said to spend hours on shots that end up only being a few seconds, focusing intently on visual details.
27.
Dee Rees is a lesbian, and she described Pariah as semi-autobiographical.
28.
Dee Rees sees Pariah as semi-autobiographical because she can relate to the main concepts of the film.
29.
Since at least 2017, Rees has been in a relationship with poet and writer Sarah M Broom.
30.
Dee 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.