Tessa Thompson and 'Little Woods' director Nia DaCosta are breaking down Hollywood barriers

While pursuing a graduate degree in London, rising filmmaker Nia DaCosta was unpacking complicated feelings of homesickness when she began to conceptualize the script for her directorial debut, "Little Woods."

"I missed America, but I was like, 'What does that mean?'" she said. "Especially for me as a black woman [from] New York City. I realized my relative privilege of growing up not well-off, but in a city where I had access to so many things regardless of how much money I had."

She compared her experiences to those of women in places such as the Great Plains, where lack of access to health care, child care and abortion services keep many women below the poverty line. "I really thought I should tell a story about women who live in a rural part of America, particularly those who are poor, and how that affects them not just as people, but