Minding the Gap

Bing Liu skateboards behind his friends Zack and Keire through run-down parks, past crumbling facades and abandoned houses. The skateboarder clique has become a kind of substitute family for this group of youths from a rundown district of Rockford in Illinois. Avid filmmaker Bing captures the lives of his friends away from the skate park: Zack's life is turned upside down when his girlfriend Nina suddenly becomes pregnant. The relationship soon begins to crumble and Zack, plagued by self-doubt and frustration, seeks solace in the bottle. Keire, who longs for reconciliation with his father, has not yet found his place in a multicultural society. And for Bing himself, it's time to confront his mother with a dark chapter from his own past. The lyrical debut work of Bing Liu was created over a period of several years. The filmmaker succeeds in dealing with his friends in an extraordinary and highly emotional way to show the complexity of a biased, "difficult" youth.