Pariah

Pariah (2011) is an independent drama from Dee Rees you can watch online on iFILM. Seventeen-year-old Alike lives in Brooklyn and runs a double life: at home she's the obedient daughter in a dress, but around the corner she tucks her hair under a cap, swaps into baggy jeans, and heads to a gay club where she finally feels like herself.

Alike knows exactly who she is — she just can't say it out loud to her family. Her mother leans on religion and dreams of molding her into the "right" kind of girl, her father looks the other way, and a first crush brings pain long before it brings joy. Adepero Oduye plays her with no self-pity at all; this Alike is more stubborn than broken, and that's what makes the ending land so hard. The film lives in half-tones: a glance, a sentence left unfinished, a silence at the dinner table.

Rees expanded her own short into this feature, and cinematographer Bradford Young bathed Brooklyn in warm neon — work that got the film noticed at Sundance. It's quiet, honest cinema about the right to be yourself. Stream Pariah (2011) online on iFILM.