Despite not being ready for it, Bing, Keire, and Zack become forced to grow up on their own terms, and it’s very moving to witness, particularly the devastating final minutes...

| Jul 2, 2024

It’s a story of blue-collar lives who have to confront the new realities of subjects from fatherhood to racism to education.

| Mar 2, 2023

There’s no denying the emotional gut-punch “Minding the Gap” packs. It’s all about the heart-breaking struggles of Keire, Zack, and Liu and the different life paths each of them travel.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Minding the Gap is lyrical, gritty, and above all, human.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 16, 2022

What emerges is a uniquely eloquent, thought-provoking and authentic portrait of what it is like to grow up and a face a future that issues few promises. Tough, yet tender stuff.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 2, 2022

The examination of these lives is one that holds a great discussion about the relationships with troubled friends and how one may pursue something better for himself while the other does not.

| Original Score: 10/10 | May 29, 2022

What power the documentary has to make your heart hurt and celebrate all at once for strangers on a screen.

| Feb 11, 2022

Episode 14: Doc Talk

| Original Score: 88/100 | Sep 1, 2021

Minding the Gap is difficult, urgent, and vital.

| Feb 9, 2021

Don't miss this one.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 29, 2021

Filmmaker Bing Liu makes a heartfelt tale about friendship and the peaks and valleys of adolescence. Candid conversations transpire, and captivating reflections of youth and hardships surface in this cinematic rarity.

| Original Score: A | Jan 25, 2021

Minding the Gap is a movie about heart and heartbreak, about pain, about Rockford and about a hundred other things. It's also, most importantly, about skateboarding.

| Dec 8, 2020

One of the finest and most personal documentaries of recent years.

| Dec 2, 2020

Liu's film, then, becomes a deeply personal catharsis, as well as a socioeconomically poignant portrait of the effects of post-industrialism on a community.

| Jul 30, 2020

"I get mad at skateboarding, a lot, but at the end of the day, I love it so much I can't stay mad at it."

| Original Score: A+ | Jun 30, 2020

Minding the Gap might be the finest documentary experience I've had all year, and you should absolutely make a point of seeking it out.

| Jun 23, 2020

Heart-breaking glimpses of... lives in a film that uses a passion for skateboarding to expose the connections between poverty, race, sex and class in Trump's America.

| Jun 1, 2020

A kaleidoscope of themes that, althoughat times is ambitious, is a beautiful draw. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 13, 2020

Though it runs just 93 minutes, this cinema-verite documentary by Bing Liu manages to feel like an epic.

| Mar 24, 2020

While it's a film about skateboarding, it's also definitely not a film about skateboarding.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 6, 2020