Queens of Concrete review: skateboard passion meets pressure

Queens of Concrete follows three teenage skaters in their attempts to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Over the course of six years, Charlotte Heath, Ava Godfrey and Hayley Wilson attempt to succeed not just for the sake of their own careers, but for the view of skating in the public eye, and for the view of women in the sport.

As in any good sports documentary, tension is built on the question of whether or not they will succeed in making their dreams reality, but where Queens of Concrete differs is that the girls’ biggest obstacle might be the very process of trying to succeed.

There is never any question about whether any of them have what it takes, they clearly do: the question is whether their love of skating can survive under the pressure.

Queens of Concrete: tight

First-time feature director Eliza Cox constructs the narrative with care, building a focused story that still honours the messiness of real life.

On a technical level, the film is an impressive accomplishment. Cox has managed to condense six years of footage into a tight feature, with a balance between the personal stories of the subjects at the centre and the broader context of skating as an international sport.

Watch the Queens of Concrete trailer

From the opening montage that cuts from shots of the girls showing off their skill to a wide shot of a skate park full of boys, what it means to be a woman in sport, especially one as relatively new as skating, is never far from view. While the film’s focus is on the girls and their undeniable skill, it is littered with reminders that the sport has a significant gender imbalance.

Queens of Concrete: mental health

The heart of the documentary’s narrative is its subjects’ relationship to the sport they love and how making it into a career affects their mental health. All three go through a journey from the excitement of realising that they have what it takes to make skating into a career, to feeling the pressure to perform, to the anxiety that comes from building such a precarious career.

We watch as competitions go from being the fun kind of competitive to nerve-wracking, as performing badly means dropping positions in the world ranking, which might mean losing sponsorships and future opportunities to compete.

‘Don’t monetise your hobbies,’ is a common adage in some internet spaces. Any artist who spends less time drawing than they do trying to stop fast fashion brands stealing their art, or YouTuber who deprioritises quality in favour of maintaining an upload schedule that keeps them relevant, will tell you that turning something you’re passionate about into a job changes your relationship to it.

Skating as a career means competing, and competing takes its toll, a problem that is compounded by just how young some competitors are. As Concrete points out, there’s no minimum age requirement for international competitions, so young children are thrown into a high-stakes competitive environment against adults.

For Charlotte, nine years old when the documentary begins, this results in her excitement being gradually overshadowed by performance anxiety.

Stories of talented athletes forced to choose between their career and their health are not hard to find. Naomi Osaka withdrew from the 2021 French Open rather than attend the compulsory post-match press conferences that filled her with anxiety.

Simone Biles (the subject of another 2024 documentary, Netflix’s Rising) won four gold medals at the Paris Olympics but could have ended her career altogether after the Tokyo games when she suffered a disconnect between mind and body that gymnasts call ‘the twisties’.

Queens of Concrete: pressure

The pressure of competition affects all three of the film’s subjects in different ways. When it does, Cox is respectful in depicting their difficulties without invading their privacy. Their pain is clear, but never a spectacle.

Hayley refers to the ‘high highs and low lows’ she experienced over the course of filming, but the specifics are always just out of frame. I certainly appreciated this choice, I don’t think anybody would want to immortalise the worst days of their teenage years.

What begins as a story about three girls trying to succeed in a sport evolves into a story about the nature of success. Hayley, Ava, and Charlotte begin their journey with the same idea of what success looks like, but at the end they’ve all changed the parameters to make success something more personal to them.

The story is bittersweet but hopeful, with an ending that expertly lands a story about growing up and re-evaluating your dreams. Queens of Concrete is an athlete’s journey, but it is also a story that asks you to appreciate the many versions of yourself, from the teenager with all-consuming passions that they would do anything to follow, to the adult with bills to pay.

Giving up on a dream, or just changing the parameters, isn’t a tragedy when chasing it is hurting you. In fact, following a different path might be the only way to keep your passion alive.

Queens of Concrete is now showing in select cinemas.

Discover more film & TV reviews on ScreenHub …