Central to Aleshea Harris’ film Is God Is is the relationship between sisters–and by extension, all Black women.
Harris spoke with Just Add Color about how she approached aspects of Blackness, including Black women’s emotional inner lives. Both characters, twins Racine (Kara Young) and Anaia (Mallori Johnson) represent different aspects of the Black female experience. In Anaia’s case, in particular, its owning your sensitivity in a world that doesn’t want to acknowledge or respect your emotional makeup.
“Anaia [and Racine], they’re sort of foils for one another,” she said. “One is driven by one kind of impulse and, and the other is driven by another. I think Anaia’s impulse is to step away from danger…She’ll meet it, right? She will fight, but, but that’s her impulse. So I needed both of these women to hold each other and to have a kind of balance in the narrative.”
“But I think what [Anaia] does for other sensitive women–which, you know, I feel like I’m both of these women, I can be quite sensitive–is that she learns throughout the journey how to stand up for herself,” Harris continued. “She learns to, I mean, you know, she does things to protect her sister, and she goes on this journey, in fact, to protect her sister. So I love that the person that we meet at the beginning of this movie would not have the strength to ride off into the sunset at the end if she hadn’t gone through these things. So that’s why Anaia, I think, is particularly important.”
Check out the full interview below.
Here’s more about Is God Is.
In Is God Is, two sisters embark on an epic quest for revenge, confronting a charged family history that will push them to extraordinary lengths. The film is Aleshea Harris’ directorial debut and is based on Harris’ adaptation of her award-winning play of the same name.
Is God Is will be in theaters May 15.
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