Hailing from Tennessee, forty year-old writer-director Dee Rees received one of the festival’s warmest receptions this year with Mudbound. The film is a tale of love, heartbreak and friendship set against the Jim Crow South, in the aftermath of the Second World War (when indignities against returning African Americans began to really underscore the injustice of segregation). Rees wrote and directed and worked with a female editor and director of photography. Women also headed the music, makeup and sound departments. Ting Ting Xu caught up with her and asked about the experience.