The film tells the story of two families in the Mississippi Delta in the 1940s. The McAllan family is white and their neighbors, the Jacksons, are black. The Jacksons are sharecroppers who have a connection to the land, while the McAllans are a middle-class family that own a large plot of land in Mississippi. "Mudbound" tells a story of racism and race relations that continue to be played out today. The movie explores whiteness and the privilege associated with it, while comparing and contrasting the experiences of white and Black folk of the period. This work contains many personal connections for Rees, such as her grandfather's experiences in the army and her grandmother who aspired to be a stenographer, an ambition shared with one of the characters in the film. Rees used her grandmother's journal to help guide her process. It contained family photographs of their slave ancestors, with the names of who fought in wars. Rees says that by using this it was a way of interrogating her own personal history. She used written text from the journal, a war ration book, and a photograph of her great grandmother, and each one was an inspiration for something in "Mudbound". Rees and Williams were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for "Mudbound", which made Rees the first black woman to be nominated for any Academy Award in a writing category, and the first black woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. As well, the nomination of Mary J. Blige for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for "Mudbound" made Rees the first black woman to direct a film for which an actor or actress was nominated for an Academy Award. A lesser-known project of Rees' includes the show "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams," where Rees was given the chance to engage with the many emotions looming around the election of Donald Trump, and manipulate them within a sci-fi context, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Rees is also attached to write and direct "An Uncivil War" for FilmNation. In 2018, Rees was nominated for NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing. Rees directed "The Last Thing He Wanted", based upon the novel of the same name by Joan Didion, which stars Anne Hathaway and Willem Dafoe. The Film was distributed by Netflix. Rees is a lesbian, and she described "Pariah" as semi-autobiographical.