Minding the Gap

Minding the Gap (2018) is a documentary worth watching online for anyone who assumes skateboarding films have nothing left to say. Director Bing Liu filmed his own childhood friends across twelve years in the Rust Belt town of Rockford, Illinois, and shaped the footage into a raw study of growing up.

Keire, Zack and Liu himself skated to get out of the house — away from drunk stepfathers, broke paychecks and fists behind closed doors. The camera stays close as the boys turn into men: one becomes a father and watches his relationship fall apart, another tries to leave a town where everyone seems stuck. Liu slowly turns the lens on his own mother and finally asks her the questions he'd buried for years.

It's a personal investigation into how violence passes from fathers to sons. The film landed an Oscar nomination and a Sundance jury prize, and earned both — skate video rarely opens into a conversation this honest about pain and responsibility. If you love documentaries that breathe without a narrator telling you how to feel, don't miss it. Stream Minding the Gap (2018) online on iFILM.