Mudbound , a sprawling, ambitious drama that debuted on Netflix and in select theaters last Friday, has earned its director, Dee Rees, a deserved crown.

Rees first movie, the 2011 coming-of-age jewel Pariah, was a festival hit that netted her an Independent Spirit Award and a small but devoted audience. She followed that with 2015s Bessie, the Emmy-winning HBO movie about famed blues singer Bessie Smith. Both showcase a filmmaker with a sharp eye for the nuances of human connection, but Mudbound is in a class of its own, chronicling two families one black, one white on a dusty plantation in World War IIera Mississippi. Racial stratification plagues everyday existence on and off their farmstead, especially once the clans sons (played by Jason Mitchell and Garrett Hedlund) become friends. Rees, who adapted Hillary Jordans novel of the same name with ER writer Virgil Williams, weaves numerous characters perspectives together to create a searing, audacious masterwork.

None of Netflixs original releases have secured acting, directing or writing nominations from the Oscars, but the acclaim that has greeted Mudbound could help to end the streaming services dry spell. I talked to Rees in New York in October right as awards-season campaigns were first escalating about portraying the Jim Crow South, working with Mary J. Blige and the films she thinks are worthy of history classes.