Hello movie heads. It's movie mindset coming back at you with a bonus episode.

This is continuing our director's series. And on this episode, it is our privilege to be talking to the filmmaker Lexi Alexander, the director of such films as Green Street, Punisher Warzone, and the recently

released Absolute Dominion. Lexi, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for inviting me.

I want to begin with your most recent film, Absolute Dominion, which I just watched this morning.

It's a movie about a sort of futuristic martial arts tournament

that will determine the fate of the world. But I was thinking about just in terms of your own

experience in martial arts. You're quite an accomplished martial artist yourself. I'm just curious

how your experience in combat sports and fighting informs the way that you film and choreograph a fight

scene in a movie like this? Well, you know, I used to grow up going to these tournaments and

always watching like the top fighters. So you, you know, I had to watch out, you know, when my

fight was and like pay attention to when my weight class was being

called. But I would always be eager to go to the, you know, other weight classes and the kind of

guys that were really famous at the time and watch their fights. And so I think I instinctively know

what, you know, I know what I react to and what other fighters react to

when a big hit happens, you know, the whole auditorium will go, ooh, you know. And so in all the

fight scenes, whether it was in Green Street or Punisher or even my first from Johnny Flinton,

like I try to frame it in a way that gives me that feeling.

And what that usually is, is, you know, you can't make it like very cutty and go in deep.

You have to be somewhat outside and see the whole movement.

You know, it's important that you see the beginning of the movement,

the end, and then what happens afterwards. And so if you make it too cutty and, you know,

you go in too tight, you kind of mess that up. So that's always been kind of the style. I

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