New Film Director's Series includes Exploration of Lesbian and her Church-going Mom

The New York Times
February 17, 2011

NEW YORK CITY --  The 40th annual New Directors/New Films series, presented by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center will feature Dee Rees’ debut feature PARIAH. Executive produced by Spike Lee, the 2011 film is a character study of a seventeen year-old New Yorker (played by Adepero Oduye) whose efforts to explore her lesbian desires are squarely at odd with her middle-class Brooklyn family – and more specifically, her church-going mother (played by Kim Wayans). The film draws an affectionate portrait of a community, one so close everyone knows everyone else’s ‘business’, and dramatizes the longings, disappointments and achievements of a teenager whose ideas of femininity are less traditional than most. A Focus Features release. [link]