Dee Rees's Pariah breaks ground for Black queer cinema

Dee Rees's feature debut Pariah, released December 28, 2011, told the story of a Black teenage girl coming to terms with her lesbian identity in Brooklyn. The film was praised as a landmark work of Black queer cinema and won the Gotham Award for Best Film. Rees became the first Black woman to direct a film selected for the Sundance main competition and helped open space for Black LGBTQ stories in American cinema.