By Okla Jones ·Updated February 20, 2026 Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…

Aleshea Harris has never been interested in staying inside any box. With Is God Is, the playwright-turned-filmmaker expands her award-winning stage work into a full-length suspense thriller, and today, ESSENCE exclusively debuts the film’s first trailer.

The footage offers a striking introduction to Harris’ feature directorial debut, following twin sisters on a relentless journey shaped by family trauma and a demand for revenge. What unfolds feels at once intimate and mythic, grounded in lived experience while pulling from ancient forms of storytelling. Harris wrote and directed the adaptation herself, building on the foundation of a play that earned critical acclaim for its bold voice and genre-blending structure.

Kara Young and Mallori Johnson lead as the twins at the center of the story, joined by Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Josiah Cross, with Vivica A. Fox and Sterling K. Brown. Produced by Tessa Thompson, Kishori Rajan, Riva Marker, Janicza Bravo, and Harris, Is God Is signals the arrival of a filmmaker unafraid to claim space.

In the Q&A that follows, Harris speaks about translating the language of the stage to the camera, learning the mechanics of film direction in real time, embracing a story that centers Black characters without compromise, and more.

ESSENCE: Is God Is has a cast that includes Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Josiah Cross, with Vivica A. Fox and Sterling K. Brown. How did that cast come together?

Aleshea Harris: I knew Kara from a reading I had done. So we started narrowing things down and got down to Kara and Mallori because they had tremendous chemistry. They were able to just really work off of each other beautifully, and they were able to play a lot of nuance, which I needed for the twins. And I was thinking that it would be a good idea to surround these two breakout younger actresses with people who we might have more knowledge of, who’ve been in the game a little bit longer. And so we just approached folks, gave them the script, gave them my vision. Sometimes I would have a conversation with them and they got on board. Luckily for me, well for all of us, they were enthusiastic about the project.

What was it like for you to adapt your acclaimed stageplay to the screen?

The stage play actually has the twins journeying from the Northeast down to the South and then out West. So it lent itself very easily to just moving on the stage. I guess one could say that we were restricted on the stage and the movie allowed us to open up this world and really get these twins on the road. So it was built into the DNA of it, and it was a lot of fun to expound. There are things that are different. Erika’s character was not in the movie and her son’s character was not in the movie. So it was an adventure just trying to find ways to flex inside of this different medium.

Is God Is is such a unique story. Talk to me about the creation of its plot and the story arc.

Okay, so it all started with one germ of an idea, and the thought I had was like, “what would happen if you wrote a story that took its cues from ancient Greek tragedy, but was populated by people who look and speak like you?” And just that idea felt so fruitful and so full that that’s where I started. So I started crafting this story, which is just true to my sensibility. A revenge tale is—I love revenge tales. I’ve watched a lot of ’em. The way that the Western genre has found its way in, I love Westerns. I also think I put the pedal to the metal because I don’t see us there. So there’s something that I feel like I’m in new territory or I don’t see us there enough or in my way.

So it really was plot forward. It was like I had that idea, I just found this amazing story, and then I started to flex into these other genres that organically were working their way inside of the story. I have a principle of anything that I want to do, I can do. There’s no flavor of storytelling that’s off limits to Black people. I think I got very free writing this play because up until then there had been some level of trying to write the thing I thought I was allowed to write, that I thought would be accepted, and this really allowed me to break free, liberate myself and create a story that was really true to my taste and my sensibilities. And lucky for me, other people are down with it.

Were there any obstacles or challenges getting the stage play adapted to film?

It was a bit of a journey. It had been with one producer and that situation didn’t work out, as happens often in Hollywood. So, it really was finding the right partners to make this movie with. So I paired with the folks at Viva Maude—that’s Tessa Thompson and Kishori Rajan, Riva Marker from Linden, and Janicza Bravo. They were the folks that I teamed up with to then shop the story around, shop the screenplay around, and get it sold, obviously to Orion at Amazon MGM. So really, I think some of the greatest challenges were in the writing. I had not written for the screen when I first put pen to page on this. It took the experience of being in writers’ rooms, reading more screenplays and coming to understand in my body what the difference was between these two mediums that helped me to find it. And when I found it, it felt like it just flowed very quickly. But it was just a journey of finding the right partners and getting lots of work in articulating what my vision was from the stage to the screen.

And as a director, what differences were there when you’re directing a stage play as opposed to directing for the screen?

I should preface this. I haven’t directed a lot for the stage, just a little bit. Primarily my practice was as a writer. But there are so many differences and there’s also tremendous overlap. One thing is the amount of language that you can use on the screen. So I was very careful of not wanting to bombard the audience, weighing it down with a lot of language. You can do that in a play. It can be very, very dialogue-heavy.

But you need to let the images speak. You can’t bombard your audience with too much length. That’s what I learned and that’s what felt really right to me. Also, the way that you achieve things like intimacy on the screen, having to consider what the lens is and the size and the proximity to the subject, and how to carry the viewer’s eye or point the viewer’s eye in a particular direction. The way that you do that on the screen is obviously very different from how you do it on the stage. There are similarities, right? You want to find actors who are in the pocket and you want to find people who are quite nuanced in their portrayal, but they also need to know how to do that on a screen. The training is very different. Maybe some people don’t know that, but how you show up and express yourself when a camera is very close to you is very different from what you need to do to articulate your voice in live theater. So there’s a bit of a learning curve. But it was fun to sort of bounce between the two spaces and learn the differences in real time.

In theater, everything is one take. In film, you can do dozens of takes. How did your mindset shift going into Is God Is?

Thank you for naming that. That’s also a huge difference. In the theater, it’s live. You rehearse on the front end and then you just go. I was surprised by how little rehearsal time there was to make this movie. And as you said, you do it in takes and then you go on the back end and you put the thing together. That’s a completely different way of arriving at the story. So I’m still learning what kind of director I am, but I will tell you this—Sterling K. Brown, I asked him for advice when I talked to him and he said, “if your takes are getting in the double digits, it’s too many takes.” So I took that advice and I really tried to understand with clarity what I wanted and think about how to communicate it to the actors so that we had to move swiftly. We had a tight schedule, so that was golden advice from him. So I don’t think I’m a very take-heavy director, especially when I hear how many takes other directors get. I mean, I’m a first-timer, so maybe I can’t be as luxurious about it.

TOPICS:  black film black filmmakers Is God Is Kara Young Sterling K. Brown Vivica A. Fox

The post EXCLUSIVE: ‘Is God Is’ Trailer Unveils Aleshea Harris’ Bold, Revenge-Fueled Directorial Debut appeared first on Essence.

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