{ "id": "epe644w71s", "slug": "pariah", "title": "Pariah", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.coming-of-age-films", "label": "Coming-of-age films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.coming-of-age-films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.coming-of-age-films.coming-of-age-films-released-2010-onward", "label": "Coming-of-age films released 2010 onward", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.coming-of-age-films.coming-of-age-films-released-2010-onward" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.coming-of-age-films", "label": "United States · 2001 to 2020: Coming-of-age films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.coming-of-age-films", "path": [ { "id": "geo.us", "label": "United States", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001", "label": "United States · 2001 to 2020", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.coming-of-age-films", "label": "Coming-of-age films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.coming-of-age-films" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Pariah (2011) is Dee Rees's debut feature drama about Alike, a 17-year-old Black lesbian teenager in Brooklyn, developed from her 2007 short, released by Focus Features, and added to the Criterion Collection.", "snippet": "Pariah (2011) is Dee Rees's debut feature drama about Alike, a 17-year-old Black lesbian teenager in Brooklyn, developed from her 2007 short, released by Focus Features, and added to the Criterion Collection.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.coming-of-age-films.coming-of-age-films-released-2010-onward", "markdown": "# Pariah\n\n**Pariah** is a 2011 American drama film written and directed by Dee Rees, her debut feature, following Alike, a 17-year-old Black teenager in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood who is quietly embracing her identity as a lesbian while her parents' strained marriage frays under the question of how much she can confide in her family.[1](https://www.focusfeatures.com/pariah) The film premiered at the 2011 [Sundance Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/sundance-film-festival), where it won the Excellence in Cinematography Award for Bradford Young, and was released in limited theaters by [Focus Features](https://www.edgepedia.org/focus-features) on December 28, 2011.[2](https://web.library.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/PariahNotes.pdf) • [3](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1233334/)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Director and writer | Dee Rees, her feature debut; produced by Nekisa Cooper with Spike Lee as executive producer[1](https://www.focusfeatures.com/pariah) • [2](https://web.library.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/PariahNotes.pdf) |\n| Cast | Adepero Oduye (Alike), Pernell Walker (Laura), Aasha Davis (Bina), Kim Wayans (Audrey), Charles Parnell (Arthur)[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pariah_2011) |\n| Premiere and award | Sundance Film Festival 2011; Excellence in Cinematography Award for Bradford Young[2](https://web.library.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/PariahNotes.pdf) |\n| Release | Limited release December 28, 2011 by Focus Features; R rating; 86 minutes[3](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1233334/) |\n| Box office | $769,552 domestic gross from a $48,579 opening weekend[3](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1233334/) |\n| Critical reception | 95% Tomatometer from 121 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pariah_2011) |\n| Legacy | Added to the Criterion Collection in 2021; Rees was not the first Black woman to have a film in the collection, as Euzhan Palcy's A Dry White Season had already been included[5](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/pariah-10-dee-rees-her-mould-breaking-lesbian-classic) • [19](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6095-a-dry-white-season-justice-against-the-law) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot and characters\n\nAlike (pronounced \"ah-lee-kay\") lives with her parents and younger sister in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Academically talented and drawn to writing verse, she comes to examine who she is in terms of gender and sexuality via her bond with Laura (Pernell Walker), who is openly butch, and via a possible love interest in Bina (Aasha Davis), a girl who hides her sexuality and belongs to the congregation her mother makes her join.[1](https://www.focusfeatures.com/pariah) • [6](https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/english_4360/2/) At home she dresses femininely under the watchful, at-times wrathful eye of her mother Audrey ([Kim Wayans](https://www.edgepedia.org/kim-wayans)); her father Arthur (Charles Parnell) is a police officer.[7](https://time.com/6183107/lgbtq-movies-pride-month/) • [8](https://theweek.com/culture-life/film/the-8-best-coming-of-age-movies-of-all-time)\n\nThe film opens in a club with a mostly Black lesbian clientele, set to Khia's \"My Neck, My Back (Lick It)\", a sequence Rees has said was inspired by her own first visit to such a club.[9](https://www.filmcomment.com/queer-and-now-and-then-2011/) • [5](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/pariah-10-dee-rees-her-mould-breaking-lesbian-classic) After Audrey's ostracism and Bina's rejection, Alike decides to leave home for California, where she has received early college acceptance. In the film's closest approach to reconciliation, her father tells her she can come home if she wants; she answers, \"I'm not running, I'm choosing.\" When she tells her mother she loves her, Audrey responds, \"I'll be praying for you,\" and walks away.[9](https://www.filmcomment.com/queer-and-now-and-then-2011/) The film ends with Alike on an outbound bus, reading aloud a poem she has written, bound for a writer's bootcamp in Berkeley.[9](https://www.filmcomment.com/queer-and-now-and-then-2011/) • [10](https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/260015839/Pisters_New_Blood_in_Contemporary_Cinema.pdf)\n\n## From short film to feature\n\nRees wrote the first draft of the feature script in the summer of 2005, while going through her own coming-out process and interning on [Spike Lee](https://www.edgepedia.org/spike-lee)'s *Inside Man*, writing in longhand in notebooks during lunch breaks.[11](https://focusfeatures.com/article/transforming_passion_into_pariah?film=pariah) To fulfill her NYU thesis requirement she shot a 30-minute version in 2007, also starring [Adepero Oduye](https://www.edgepedia.org/adepero-oduye) as Alike; the short served as a calling card to raise funds for the feature.[2](https://web.library.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/PariahNotes.pdf) • [12](https://www.bafta.org/media-centre/press-releases/bafta-screenwriters-lecture-series-dee-rees/) The script evolved while Rees was a fellow at the Sundance Institute's 2007 Screenwriters Lab and 2008 Directors Lab.[2](https://web.library.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/PariahNotes.pdf) Lee, who had advised Rees on her documentary *Eventual Salvation* and given feedback on the script, came aboard as executive producer.[11](https://focusfeatures.com/article/transforming_passion_into_pariah?film=pariah)\n\nThe mother character changed substantially between versions. In the 2007 short, Audrey is strict, religious, and overprotective but ultimately redeemable; in the 2011 feature she is irreparably homophobic and the central impediment to Alike's gender and sexual freedom. The scholar Shoniqua Roach, who studies African and African American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at [Brandeis University](https://www.edgepedia.org/brandeis-university), argues in *Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society* that this homophobic Black maternal figure became an archetype in contemporary Black queer coming-out narratives, forming what she theorizes as the \"black queer liberation plot\", in which the protagonist's sexual freedom is predicated on flight from a maternal figure who stands in for a Black community.[13](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/703494)\n\n## Reception and legacy\n\nThe film was an immediate critical hit. Rotten Tomatoes records a 95% Tomatometer from 121 reviews, with a critics' consensus calling it \"a powerful coming out/coming-of-age film that signals the arrival of a fresh new talent in writer/director Dee Rees.\"[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pariah_2011) New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden hailed it as a universal coming-of-age drama, and Rees won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director.[13](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/703494) • [14](https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/watch-a-qa-with-pariah-director-dee-rees-coming-soon-to-the-film-center/) [Meryl Streep](https://www.edgepedia.org/meryl-streep) singled out Oduye's performance as one of her favorites of the year in her 2012 Golden Globes acceptance speech.[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pariah_2011)\n\n**Distribution and framing.** A 2024 study of the film's marketing notes that Focus Features, Universal Studios' specialty division, presented the film in its promotional synopsis as a universal coming-out narrative without mentioning Alike's racial group, while national newspaper reviews largely paid little attention to the fact that Alike was Black and lesbian.[15](https://shs.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2024-4-page-14?lang=en&tab=bibliographie) Critics in queer film scholarship have pushed the other way: Michael Koresky writes in *Film Comment* that the film connects the female Black queer experience to a coming-of-age vernacular long reserved for studies of heterosexual whiteness.[9](https://www.filmcomment.com/queer-and-now-and-then-2011/)\n\n**Canonization.** In 2021 the Criterion Collection released the film as spine #1083, with Rees following Euzhan Palcy as the second Black woman, and the first queer Black woman, to have a film in the collection.[16](https://www.criterion.com/films/31582-pariah) • [5](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/pariah-10-dee-rees-her-mould-breaking-lesbian-classic) • [19](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6095-a-dry-white-season-justice-against-the-law) The film has since been read as a rewriting of [Audre Lorde](https://www.edgepedia.org/audre-lorde)'s 1982 \"biomythography\" *Zami: A New Spelling of My Name*, which Rees excerpts in the film's opening; shared topics include naming, mother-daughter bonds, the role of clothing in identity formation, and queer legacy.[17](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26914826/) • [16](https://www.criterion.com/films/31582-pariah) It is often compared to [Barry Jenkins](https://www.edgepedia.org/barry-jenkins)'s *Moonlight* (2016) as a landmark of Black queer cinema, and it served as a stepping stone for Rees, who went on to direct the Oscar-nominated *Mudbound* (2017), and for cinematographer Bradford Young, later sought by directors including [Ava DuVernay](https://www.edgepedia.org/ava-duvernay), Denis Villeneuve, and Ron Howard.[5](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/pariah-10-dee-rees-her-mould-breaking-lesbian-classic) • [18](https://e-journals.unmul.ac.id/index.php/CALLS/article/view/4542)\n\nRees has called the film semi-autobiographical, heightening and expanding on some of her own difficult experiences coming out to her family.[9](https://www.filmcomment.com/queer-and-now-and-then-2011/)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Pariah, Focus Features](https://www.focusfeatures.com/pariah)\n2. [Treasures from the Yale Film Archive: Pariah notes](https://web.library.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/PariahNotes.pdf)\n3. [Pariah (2011), Box Office Mojo](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1233334/)\n4. [Pariah (2011), Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pariah_2011)\n5. [Pariah at 10: Dee Rees on her mould-breaking lesbian classic, BFI](https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/pariah-10-dee-rees-her-mould-breaking-lesbian-classic)\n6. [Brock Wilson, \"Pariah (2011)\", Utah State University](https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/english_4360/2/)\n7. [16 LGBTQ Movies to Watch This Pride Month, TIME](https://time.com/6183107/lgbtq-movies-pride-month/)\n8. [The 8 best coming-of-age movies of all time, The Week](https://theweek.com/culture-life/film/the-8-best-coming-of-age-movies-of-all-time)\n9. [Michael Koresky, \"Queer and Now and Then: 2011\", Film Comment](https://www.filmcomment.com/queer-and-now-and-then-2011/)\n10. [Patricia Pisters, \"Longing and Lust: New Blood in Contemporary Cinema\"](https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/260015839/Pisters_New_Blood_in_Contemporary_Cinema.pdf)\n11. [Transforming Passion into Pariah, Focus Features](https://focusfeatures.com/article/transforming_passion_into_pariah?film=pariah)\n12. [BAFTA Screenwriters' Lecture Series: Dee Rees](https://www.bafta.org/media-centre/press-releases/bafta-screenwriters-lecture-series-dee-rees/)\n13. [Shoniqua Roach, \"Unpacking Pariah: Maternal Figuration, Erotic Articulation, and the Black Queer Liberation Plot\", Signs 45(1), 2019](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/703494)\n14. [Watch a Q&A with Filmmaker Dee Rees, Film Society of Lincoln Center](https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/watch-a-qa-with-pariah-director-dee-rees-coming-soon-to-the-film-center/)\n15. [Can You Sell an Intersectional Narrative in the Early 2010s? The Case of Dee Rees's Pariah (2011), Cairn.info](https://shs.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2024-4-page-14?lang=en&tab=bibliographie)\n16. [Pariah, The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/31582-pariah)\n17. [Audre's daughter: Black lesbian steganography in Dee Rees' Pariah and Audre Lorde's Zami, Journal of Lesbian Studies](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26914826/)\n18. [Being Black and Queer in Pariah (2011) and Moonlight (2016), CaLLs](https://e-journals.unmul.ac.id/index.php/CALLS/article/view/4542)\n19. [6095 a Dry White Season Justice Against the Law, criterion.com](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6095-a-dry-white-season-justice-against-the-law)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Coming-of-age films › Coming-of-age films released 2010 onward*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/pariah", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/pariah.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Pariah\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/pariah. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Pariah](https://www.edgepedia.org/pariah)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/pariah](https://www.edgepedia.org/pariah). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Pariah\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/pariah. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Pariah is Dee Rees's debut feature drama about Alike, a 17-year-old Black lesbian teenager in Brooklyn, developed from her 2007 short, released by Focus Features, and added to the Criterion Collection." }