‘The Stroll’ Review: Archive-Driven Doc On NYC Trans Sex Workers Is a Wonder
Guy Lodge Film Critic Queer history is an act of excavation. Telling stories about the LGBTQ+ community — and of transgender people in particular — necessarily requires sifting through archives that are outright hostile to those they document.
In “The Stroll,” a new HBO documentary directed by Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker, the filmmakers excavate decades’ worth of images to tell the story of trans sex workers in the Meatpacking District of New York City.
Ostensibly a slice of local history of an increasingly gentrified city that sees marginalized folks as handily disposable, “The Stroll” is an empathetic portrait of a community still fighting for its own survival.
The film opens on footage of a young Lovell, taken from the 2007 doc “Queer Streets,” in which she speaks about how she first turned to sex work to make money — more money, in fact, than what she made at her day job.
