PODCAST | Nicolò Comotti interviews Bing Liu, director of the documentary Minding The Gap.
Minding The Gap, the lyrical debut work of Bing Liu here in Zurich in the international documentary competition, was created over a period of several years. In Minding The Gap, Liu succeeds in dealing with his friends in an extraordinary and highly emotional way to show the complexity of a biased, “difficult” youth.
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.