Video: Kara Young Stars in First Trailer for IS GOD IS Film Adaptation

The first trailer has dropped for Is God Is, the new feature adaptation of Aleshea Harris' award-winning play of the same name. The movie marks Harris's feature directorial debut and stars two-time Tony winner Kara Young and Mallori Johnson. It will be released in theaters on May 15.

Is God Is follows twin sisters Anaia and Racine as they undertake a revenge journey from the Dirty South to the California desert, confronting a charged family history and seeking payback for their father for a horrendous act.

The movie also stars Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Mykelti Williamson, Josiah Cross, with Vivica A. Fox and Sterling K. Brown. Harris penned the screenplay based on her play. It is produced by Tessa Thompson, Kishori Rajan, p.g.a., Riva Marker, p.g.a., Janicza Bravo, and Aleshea Harris, with Stacy O’Neil, Nicole King, and Kenneth Yu serving as executive producers.

Harris' play premiered at Soho Rep in 2018, earning three Obie awards, including Best Play and Best Director. The film adaptation was previously set at independent studio A24 with producer Scott Rudin, but is now being produced with Amazon, MGM, and Orion Pictures.

In 2025, Kara Young won a Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway production of Purpose. The year prior, she won the award for Purlie Victorious with Leslie Odom Jr. Young received her second Tony and Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play in the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Cost of Living. She made her Broadway debut in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s, for which she received a Tony and a Drama Desk Nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play. 

Aleshea Harris is a playwright, performer and educator who received an MFA in Writing for Performance from California Institute of the Arts, where she met and worked with Nataki Garrett and Jasmine Hughes. She is a winner of the American Playwriting Foundation's 2016 RELENTLESS Award in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman for Is God Is. Her recent play, On Sugarland, was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.