Diandrea Rees
( February 7, 1977)
She is an American screenwriter and director. She is known for her feature films Pariah (2011), 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.
Reeds received a United States Artists Fellowship in 2011.
Spike Lee was Rees’s mentor throughout her time at NYU Tisch, and the two worked on films together such as Inside Man (2006) and When The Levees Broke (2006). Lee also worked as a producer on Rees’s breakout film, Pariah (2011).
Cassian Elwes, producer of Mudbound (2017), has worked with Rees on multiple projects, such as The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) and Rees’s upcoming project, The Kyd’s Exquisite Follies.
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