Minding the Gap

Rockford, Illinois: a mid-sized American city located in the middle of the Rust Belt, where heavy industry once flourished, but poverty and unemployment dominate today. It is the hometown of Bing, Zack, and Keire, three friends who prefer hanging out together in the local skate park to being at home with their miserable families. As long as they are young, life seems an adventure, but with the years come new responsibilities, new obligations. Take Zack, who is catapulted into adulthood after having made his girlfriend Nina pregnant. This proves to be challenging.

It sounds like your typical coming-of-age film, and it actually is a coming-of-age film, however there's nothing typical about it. It is a documentary on which Bing Liu worked for twelve years. He paints a very nuanced, warm picture of what growing-up is like for his friends and himself, a process of trial and error. He gained an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature.