Minding the Gap

Three young men bond together to escape volatile families in their Rust Belt hometown. As they face adult responsibilities, unexpected revelations threaten their decade-long friendship.

friends Bing, Keire and Zack with skateboards
Series
POV
Premiere Date
February 18, 2019
Length
90 minutes
Funding Initiative
Open Call
  • Nominated laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    2019 Academy Awards-Best Documentary Feature
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    2019 Primetime Emmy Awards-Outstanding Documentary Or Nonfiction Special
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    2018 Peabody Awards-George Foster Peabody Award
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    2018 International Documentary Association (IDA)-Best Feature
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    2018 International Documentary Association (IDA)-Best Editing
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    2018 Sundance Film Festival-U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking
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    2018 Cinema Eye Honors-Outstanding Achievement in Direction
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    2018 Cinema Eye Honors-Outstanding Achievement in Editing
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    2018 Cinema Eye Honors-Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film
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    2018 Sheffield Doc/Fest-Doc Audience Award
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    2018 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival-Audience Award
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    2018 Mountainfilm in Telluride-Best Documentary Feature
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    2018 Critics Choice Documentary Award-Best First-Time Director
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    2019 Independent Spirit Awards-Best Documentary
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    2019 Independent Spirit Awards-Truer Than Fiction Award
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    2018 New York Film Critics Circle-Best Documentary
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    2019 The Grierson Trust-Best Cinema Documentary
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    2018 KCRW Best Documentaries of the Year-Best Documentaries of the Year, 2018
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    2018 CAAM Fest-Best Documentary
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    Producer/Director

    Bing Liu

    Bing Liu moved from China to Alabama to California to Illinois before he was eight. He received a B.A. in English literature from UIC in May of 2011. Since July 2011, Bing has been a member of the International Cinematographer's Guild, working on projects including Shameless, Empire, and Chiraq to fund his documentaries. In 2015, his short film about two… Show more Vietnamese immigrants, Nuoc, won Best Directed Documentary at the Collected Voices Film Festival. Since September 2015, Bing has been a Story Director and DP for a documentary mini-series on race and education directed by Steve James. He has taken his directorial feature, Minding the Gap, through Kartemquin’s Diverse Voices in Documentary, Tribeca All Access, Firelight Media’s Producer Lab, and Chicago Media Project’s DOC10 pitch session. Show less

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    Producer

    Diane M Quon

    Academy Award-nominated Diane Quon is a documentary producer, whose work includes: the Oscar-nominated Minding the Gap, The Dilemma of Desire, Emmy Award-nominated Finding Yingying, For the Left Hand, Wuhan Wuhan, Bad Axe, and Surf Nation (Mountainfilm Telluride 2022). Diane is a member of AMPAS and the PGA.

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    Executive Producer

    Betsy Steinberg

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    The Film

    Bing, a Chinese American 25-year-old, returns to his hometown and reconnects with two skateboarders: Keire, an African American 17-year-old, and Zack, a white 23-year-old. Bing’s investigation of trauma in their homes culminates in him confronting his own estranged family, and over the next three years, Bing and his friends’ freewheeling lives unravel as they struggle with a rocky transition from adolescence into manhood.

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