The film-maker’s first movie, about a Black lesbian teenager, has made it to the Criterion Collection, a catalogue of canonical films. She discusses her characters and the pleasure of this success

When Dee Rees was first approached by highbrow home entertainment company Criterion, it was Mudbound, her 2017 film, it wanted to discuss. Inclusion in the Criterion Collection on DVD and Blu-ray, with some titles streamed, is widely seen as confirmation of a film’s classic status. Mudbound is Rees’s most-watched film to date – approximately “20m hours of viewing”, according to Netflix – and it was up for several big awards, including the Oscar for best adapted screenplay (making Rees the first Black women nominated in a that category) and best cinematography for Rachel Morrison (the first – and, to date, only – woman to be so honoured).

Rees, though, had a different suggestion. “I was excited, but I was like: ‘It’d be really great if Pariah were there,” she says, via video call from her Harlem home. Thankfully, Criterion’s curation team agreed. “It was my first film and it just was such an important film for me, y’know? And it felt, at that time in the world, culturally important … I guess there’s nothing like your first.”