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Praxis is the title of the film I am currently developing. The word originates from Homeric Greek, where it simply meant ‘to do.’ It refers to the transformation of thought into action¹, and serves as a narrative device that encapsulates the film’s core proposition. It enacts what it names. Though seemingly abstract, the title is deliberately chosen to provoke curiosity and signal to a reflective audience that this is an action-thriller drama rooted in thought. Within the film’s diegesis, Praxis is the name of a sealed case file, not merely a repository of evidence, but a concealed thread woven deep within the film’s fabric.

In an increasingly globalised world, interconnectedness is the structure of our lives. We are not isolated agents, but nodes within overlapping global systems shaped by colonial legacies, economic displacement, militarisation, digital surveillance and political instability. These forces do not merely influence our world, they constitute it. What appears to be a coherent structure often reveals itself as a fragile mask, maintained by the very forces that determine who is recognised, who is erased and who survives. As such, Praxis is not simply a story told within a system. It is a deliberate act of exposing that system, a doing in order to unveil it.

It is within this reality that my film takes shape. A cinematic excavation of memory, violence, accountability and moral resistance. From the UK to Australia, the narrative interlaces global, sociopolitical and emotional landscapes, revealing how power operates not only through spectacle, but through the ordinary lives it regulates.

Through its characters, this film asks how individuals navigate forces they did not choose. It explores how personal identity, action and resistance are shaped by invisible frameworks, and whether justice, dignity and healing can emerge from within them. This is not just a story of survival but a meditation on what it means to act ethically in a world designed to obscure responsibility.

As a British filmmaker shaped by international heritage and an academic foundation in philosophy and political theory, with a background spanning media, photography, video production, film studies, digital media, culture and society, I approach the visual and narrative structure of this project not only as a director, but as a systems thinker. This dual grounding allows me to work fluently across all creative departments while safeguarding the integrity of the story’s moral and thematic framework. I feel an ethical imperative to tell stories that expose rather than soothe. Praxis is not a work of theory, yet it is undeniably informed by one, emotionally driven, politically conscious and intellectually engaged. It is a full-throttle work of fiction, as gripping as any high-stakes thriller, in which viewers may recognise echoes of their own experience.

Ultimately, Praxis is designed to function as cinematic spectacle, drawing on the viewer’s background and expectations. It may be experienced as gripping and action-driven, with its political and philosophical undercurrents quietly sustained beneath the surface. But that tension is deliberate. The film delivers its critique through the grammar of genre, allowing the audience either to engage at face value or to begin uncovering what lies beneath.

While Praxis may evoke a personal resonance, something buried deep within the unconscious and hiding in plain sight, awaiting excavation by cultural archaeologists, my true interest lies in the conditioning of the film’s subjects and their positioning within the narrative. This is expressed through the duality at the heart of the plot: the personal versus the institutional, and the transformation from antagonist to protagonist and vice versa. It is through this lens that each character emerges. Each character is multilayered. Each stands as a clear representation of this tension, because every figure, no matter their role, carries the cost of the world they inhabit.

While my film confronts complex themes, including surveillance and data exploitation, systemic control, inherited violence, conditioned behaviour and the ethical cost of survival, its form remains distinctly cinematic. In this regard, Praxis shares a tonal lineage with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009/2011), a film that similarly weaves personal trauma, forensic insight and institutional critique into a genre framework without sacrificing narrative drive. It is nevertheless a reminder that genre can carry both intensity and meaning.

Undoubtedly, recently released action films such as Havoc (2025) and the John Wick (2014 to 2023) franchise deliver a visceral cinematic punch. Praxis, by contrast, invites the audience not only to experience the intensity of action, but also, as in Sicario (2015), Triple Frontier (2019), Ransom (1996), Collateral (2004) and The Covenant (2023), to pause and reflect. Though conceived independently, it shares a tonal alignment with these films. Praxis refuses to moralise, offering instead something deeper beneath the surface, open to interpretation and shaped by the viewer’s own discernment.

Like those widely recognised films, Praxis operates on a dual structure, following opposing figures shaped by different forces, yet locked in mirrored confrontation. Where Sicario exposes institutional decay, Ransom explores the ethics of desperation, and Collateral reflects the violence of systemic detachment, Praxis presents its own meditation on power, control and the moral dilemma of action. It likewise refrains from drawing clear distinctions between villain, hero and rescue, nor does it offer that comfort. Instead, it reveals that everyone is entangled, each in their own way.

More so, like Ransom, Praxis engages with the abduction of human worth. But whereas Ransom presents a literal kidnapping through a high-stakes personal lens, Praxis extends the timeless metaphor into systemic territory. It allows the viewer to recognise the grand design they are already inside, the everyday trafficking of human worth.

For those who choose to look deeper, Praxis becomes not merely a story of action, but an unsettling reflection embedded within its metaphors. Its story provokes thought as much as it delivers sensation, a fusion of cinematic spectacle, intellectual restraint and emotional resonance. It is an experience where high-stakes action is interlaced with thematic depth and global perspective. Sharp, physical and hauntingly human, this is a story I felt compelled to tell.

© Victoria Cassidy 2025

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