Focus Features has acquired worldwide rights to the contemporary drama Pariah, the debut feature from writer\/director Dee Rees. Pariah world-premiered In Competition this past week at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Spike Lee is among the feature\u2019s executive producers. Pariah is produced by Nekisa Cooper.<\/p>\n
In tandem with the Pariah acquisition, Focus has engaged Ms. Rees to write a screenplay. The script deal is for a new feature-length film that the writer\/director would conceive.<\/p>\n
Pariah is one of the Festival\u2019s most acclaimed entries this year; Kyle Smith of The New York Post wrote that Pariah is \u201cemotionally satisfying\u2026with a likeable and believable heroine at its core.\u201d Andrew Barker of Variety wrote that actress Adepero Oduye gives \u201ca wonderful lead performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The feature is an expansion of Ms. Rees\u2019 short film of the same name, which screened at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Ms. Oduye, who had starred in the short film, portrays Alike (pronounced \u201cah-lee-kay\u201d), a 17-year-old African-American woman who lives with her parents (Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell) and younger sister (Sahra Mallesse) in Brooklyn\u2019s Fort Greene neighborhood. Alike is quietly but firmly embracing her identity as a lesbian. With the support of her best friend Laura (Pernell Walker), she is especially eager to find a girlfriend. Wondering how much she can confide in her family, Alike strives to get through adolescence with grace, humor, and tenacity \u2013 sometimes succeeding, sometimes not, but always moving forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Focus Features has acquired worldwide rights to the contemporary drama Pariah, the debut feature from writer\/director Dee Rees. Pariah world-premiered In Competition this past week at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Spike Lee is among the feature\u2019s executive producers. Pariah is produced by Nekisa Cooper. In tandem with the Pariah acquisition, Focus has engaged Ms.\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1131],"class_list":["post-5294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","tag-pariah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5294"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5297,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5294\/revisions\/5297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smartcine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}