As Aleshea Harris makes her feature directorial debut, she’s establishing her own cinematic style, which pulls from many influences.
The Is God Is writer/director recently noted that despite several comparisons to Quentin Tarantino, she’s trying to do “my own thing” with the Southern Gothic revenge thriller, now playing in theaters.
“I don’t want to be like a poor man’s Tarantino, you know?” Harris told the Associated Press. “I am doing my own thing, and I hope that people recognize that. It seems like they are.”
With influences including Greek tragedies, Westerns, fairytales, Harris added, “I just sort of went on a feast, a buffet of like what did other people do that I loved.”
Noting films like O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Moonlight, Lady Snowblood and Amélie inspired her aesthetic, she wanted to create a world that was “three clicks to the left of center,” and she ultimately found “a world that feels like realism, but like ratcheted up.”
IS GOD IS, director Aleshea Harris, on set, 2026. ph: Patti Perret / © Amazon MGM Studios / courtesy Everett Collection
Based on Harris’ 2018 off-Broadway play of the same name, which received three Obie Awards, Is God Is follows twin sisters Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson), who were burned as babies in a fire. When their disfigured mother, whom they refer to as God (Vivica A. Fox), summons them to her deathbed, she instructs them to kill their father, the Monster (Sterling K. Brown), who set the blaze years ago.
Now playing in theaters, Is God Is also stars Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson and Josiah Cross.
