Flex Is Kings takes place in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, where high crime rates and diminished opportunities have left the young men growing into adulthood few choices and fewer resources, pushing so many into lives dependent on crime and gangs. Yet there is a large and growing group resisting the notion that their prospects are limited to a powerless existence.

On these streets a dance community rose, eager for an avenue of expression and determined to create a positive force in their neighborhood. "Flex" is the name of the dance style - it involves dance battle competitions that are at once flights of fancy as well as poetic evocations of the streets - gun battles, romantic interludes, run-ins with authorities. The film is structured around a season of Battlefest, the central organizing event of the Flex movement, and focuses on some of the community's key personalities.