‘Is God Is’ trailer delivers star power and a bold message about Black women and girls

Starring Sterling K. Brown, Vivica Fox, Erika Alexander, and more, Is God Is reimagines revenge through a deeply Black, poetic lens

“Black women and girls are to be taken seriously.” 

That is one of the many messages Aleshea Harris hopes viewers take away from the gripping film adaptation of her screenplay “Is God Is.” Produced by Tessa Thompson and starring Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Vivica A. Fox, Sterling K. Brown, and more, “Is God Is” follows two sisters as they embark on an epic quest for revenge, confronting a charged family history that will push them to extraordinary lengths

As Harris likes to describe it, the film’s world is “three clicks to the left of center.” 

“So a little lifted from reality,” she shared in a press conference. “It’s a world that has these stock characters that are like larger than life. It’s a world where these women are on this adventure [where] they’re seeking their destiny. 
So we get that sense from other revenge tales.” 

The suspenseful thriller draws inspiration from films like “Kill Bill,” with subtle references to western tropes and ancient Greek tragedy, which Harris says add “mayhem, absurdity, whimsy” to the film’s cultural world. However, before imagining “Is God Is” as a film, Harris created the story for the theater, a screenplay that debuted in 2018. Though she notes the differences between writing for stages and writing for screen, the playwright intentionally preserved 

“The language of the play is very specific. It takes me a long time to start a play because I’m always trying to craft language and figure out what the mother tongue of the story is. So I really wanted to stay true to that, to the poetry of that,” she shared. 

“There’s also in the play on the page, there’s a lot of typographical performance, so the language dances all over the page, and it’s meant to enhance the reader’s experience, but also help us to understand how the character is feeling. So their text might be really small, if they feel small, or if it’s a whisper… And certainly it’s more explosive moments, you know, I let the language explode. 
And I carry that over. I don’t want to say, you know, I don’t want to spoil it, but I definitely brought that performance of the language into the film as well,” she added. 

With breakout stars, Kara Young and Mallori Johnson leading the film, Harris intentionally surrounded the duo with industry veterans that audiences may recognize, but are encountering in a very new way–this is not the Sterling K. Brown we’ve witnessed on shows like “Paradise” or “This is Us.” Part of that magic lies in Harris’s unapologetic storytelling approach. 

“I think what’s exciting about it is that there’s a sense that absolutely anything is possible for Black people inside of a narrative. And that I really tried to bring my whole self, I didn’t have to try. I just organically brought myself into it. So the braids, that’s organic to my experience. It’s beautiful. There’s a bit of a nod to the Greeks, but it’s but it is deeply black, right? So we have all these ways that I’m sort of remixing things that are familiar, but making them true and closer to myself,” she said, reflecting on the film’s visual storytelling. 

Teasing a variety of themes from family trauma to religion to life in South, “Is God is” is bound to spark a variety of conversations across audiences, but for Harris she hopes the film echoes one very simple message: “Black women and girls are to be loved and taken seriously…That’s it. Period.”