DIRECTOR/SCREENPLAY: Dee Rees
PRODUCER: Nekisa Cooper 
PRODUCTION CO: Chicken and Egg Pictures, MBK Entertainment, Northstar Pictures
PHOTOGRAPHY: Bradford Young
EDITOR: Mako Kamitsuna
MUSIC: The Co-Stars
WITH: Adepero Oduye (Alike), Pernell Walker (Laura), Aasha Davis (Bina), Charles Parnell (Arthur), Sahra Mellesse (Sharonda), Kim Wayans (Audrey)

FESTIVALS: Sundance, Toronto

REVIEWS

“The path to living as one’s authentic self is paved with trials and tribulations in this revelatory, assured feature debut by Dee Rees – the all-too-rare coming-of-age tale to honestly represent the experiences of queer Black women. Grounded in the fine-grained specificity and deft characterisations of Rees’s script and built around a beautifully layered performance from Adepero Oduye, Pariah follows Brooklyn teenager Alike, who is navigating the emotional minefields of first love and heartache and the disapproval of her family as she expresses her gender and sexual identities within a system that does not make space for them. Achieving an aching intimacy with its subject through the expressive cinematography of Bradford Young, this deeply felt portrait finds strength in vulnerability and liberation in letting go.”

— Criterion.com

“Like the best films about adolescence, from Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel movies to So Yong Kim’s In Between Days, Pariah – about one lower-middle-class, African-American, lesbian teen – is a profoundly specific film centering on universal themes: discovering who and what you are drawn to, fighting for autonomy against arbitrary parental rules, or, in this case, tyranny.”

– Melissa Anderson, Village Voice

“There’s this idea in the marketplace that if you tell a story about a Black lesbian teenager, no one’s going to watch that, except for Black lesbian teenagers. We disproved that. Pariah is about people, it’s about identity, it’s about families, it’s about home – we can all relate to that.”

– Dee Rees, Guardian

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Auckland   
Monday, 28 March, 6:15pm
​This screening is open to the public (AFS only), all tickets $10 (AFS members free). Tickets on sale now at Academy Cinemas

New Plymouth
Wednesday, 13 April, 6.00pm

Canterbury     
Monday, 9 May, 7.00pm

Whanganui   
Monday, 16 May, 7.00pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 14 June, 8.15pm

Wellington     
Monday 26 July, 6.15pm

Nelson
Tuesday, 12 July, 6pm

Palmerston North 
Wednesday, 27 July,, 6.00pm 


SOUTH AMERICAN CINEMA >> ​