Metacritic reviews

From both a technical and political standpoint, The Stroll is a tremendous achievement.

The Stroll is a staggering work of conjuration. Lovell, her friends, and her interviewees unpack the history of the place and all the vibrant spirits who once teemed in the street.

If The Stroll is an indictment and elegy, it is also a remarkable document of the self-determination of the women and workers who learned, in the face of the worst odds, to fend for themselves and each other.

Enduring racist policing, violence, poverty, and employment discrimination; they also found joy, humor, sisterhood, and community. By celebrating these women’s humanity and spirit without minimizing their hardships, that duality is what makes The Stroll so markedly different than what’s come before it.

The Stroll is a vital work of recent urban history. Even if you wouldn’t want to have lived there, you won’t regret visiting.

Kristen Lovell has skin in the game of the story she tells, making The Stroll, an oral/archive history of the trans sex workers of New York’s Meatpacking District, a raw and tender memoir.

One of the captivating paradoxes of Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s lovingly assembled chapter of queer history is that while it never downplays the marginalization, persecution and physical danger of being a trans woman of color making a living through sex work, it gives equal time to the resilience, the sense of community, the proud sisterhood and shared survival skills.

The Stroll is ultimately a celebration of the colorful personalities that worked the streets and have a story to tell. It’s a history of multiple communities and an important contribution to New York lore; a story told from the perspective of someone who made history and is now in a position to write it.

Lovell’s intimate connection to the subject forms the basis of the film’s power, which rests on a palpable pride in sisterhood.

The Stroll is overtly broad, detached, and full of ready-made empowerment rhetoric.