Aleshea Harris wrote "Is God Is" with the assumption that it would never be performed as a play, let alone turned into a movie. It was simply a story she needed to get onto the page: A tale of rage and revenge, an ancient Greek tragedy melded with Spaghetti Western tropes centered on contemporary Black women, twins, on an epic, violent journey to find the father who wronged them. She even rewatched Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" while she was writing.

"I've endured so many narratives in which Black women, they're just sort of downtrodden victims, you know? They endure, they gain their strength and we love them because look at what all she can take. I think that's horrific," Harris said in a recent interview. "This was my antidote to that. This was my medicine to myself for that."

That's the thing about art that boldly flies in the face of taboo and stereotypes; Sometimes, it turns out, it's on to something that audiences have been craving too. The Obie-winning stage play, which debuted off-Broadway in 2018, hit a nerve with audiences and critics, garnering comparisons to Tarantino and Martin McDonagh. Soon, talks of a feature film were underway. Harris never thought she'd be the one to direct it, having barely even been on a set before, but producer Janicza Bravo and their mutual friend, playwright Jeremy O. Harris, had other ideas: It was her story after all, she should be the one to tell it.

"It really was like the belief of those folks and that invitation," Harris said. "It was like a switch being flipped. Of course, of course I'm in."

The film, which is now playing in theaters, has garnered similarly effusive praise from critics and audiences. It stars Kara Young and Mallori Johnson as badly scarred twins who, after fending for... Read More