Skipping Joy

Director · Producer · Editor

A film about what happens when grown-ups remember how to play. Sparked by one father watching his eight-year-old son skip freely down a New York street, the film follows a decade-long search for what we lose as self-consciousness takes hold and what we might reclaim when we move through the world with less fear.

The Film

Inspired by Tim Leuzarder’s experience with his son who, on the promise of a dog, started skipping down a New York street. His son’s simple expression of joy, fueled by his desire to help him keep that abandon as he matured, became the starting point for a decade-long journey.

Across multiple continents, Tim speaks with people living very different lives, from neuroscientists and athletes to artists, entrepreneurs, celebrities, prisoners, skipping advocates, and people confronting loss. Some move through the world with an ease that resists performance. For others, something as simple as skipping loosens a part of themselves that experience, expectation, or pain had taught them to hold back.

Skipping Joy poster: Skipping Joy documentary film poster featuring Tim Leuzarder skipping through an airport.

As the journey deepens, so do the questions. Tim’s search becomes entangled with family, grief, healing, and his relationships with both his son and his father. What begins as curiosity about a forgotten childhood impulse gradually reveals something larger: sometimes the smallest acts can reopen doors we did not realize we had closed.

Skipping Joy is not about returning to childhood. It is about what life asks us to surrender as we learn to behave, belong, protect ourselves, and avoid looking foolish, and what we might still reclaim when we choose, even briefly, to move differently.

In a world that teaches us to march, the film asks whether it is still possible to skip.

Featured Participants

Rosie O’Donnell

Actor, comedian, producer, and television personality
Dr. Heather Berlin
Neuroscientist whose work explores the neural basis of consciousness, creativity, and behavior

Kenn Nesbitt

Poet and former U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate
Ashrita Furman
Record-setting athlete known for an extraordinary number of Guinness World Records
Peter Kim
Fashion entrepreneur and founder of Hudson Jeans, on breaking through cultural and familial expectations
Dion Flynn
Comedian and former Late Night with Jimmy Fallon performer, on humor, healing, and joy

The film also brings together skipping advocates, educators, athletes, entrepreneurs, and everyday people encountered across Africa, South America, Europe, and the United States, each offering a different perspective on play, inhibition, and what makes us feel fully alive.

Nurse/Uganda: Nurse skipping down a street in Uganda during filming of the documentary Skipping Joy.

My good friend Tim Leuzarder inspired Skipping Joy with a story about watching his eight-year-old son skip freely down a New York street on the promise of a dog. As we talked it through, we both knew we had to explore this experience. Tim was inspired by the idea of helping his son hold onto that freedom before self-consciousness and concern about what others think begin to take hold as we mature. I mentioned that this exploration might make a great documentary; he immediately agreed and blurted out the title: Skipping Joy.

Making Skipping Joy

Inmate: Inmate and two women skipping together during the filming of the documentary Skipping Joy.

Ashrita Furman: Ashrita Furman being filmed on a residential street for the documentary Skipping Joy.

What started as a simple question — why do we stop skipping? — gradually expanded into a decade-long journey across countries, cultures, and very different lives.

As director, producer, and editor, I worked closely with Tim, my development partner, and the film’s principal funder to shape the project as the original question grew beyond the physical act itself and into a narrative exploring self-consciousness, conformity, play, loss, creativity, and the fear of looking foolish. Along the way, we brought together neuroscientists, performers, athletes, entrepreneurs, skipping advocates, and people whose experiences revealed different ways of reclaiming their freedom.

The challenge was never simply to answer why adults stop skipping. It was to find the larger story inside a deceptively simple question — not about returning to childhood, but about what it takes to move through the world with less hesitation and more of ourselves intact.