Oscar-nominated director of ‘Hale County This Morning, This Evening’ RaMell Moss is making his narrative feature directorial debut with ‘Nickel Boys’, an ambitious drama set in the 1962 Jim Crow era. Based on the 2019 Pulitzer-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, the film tells the story of two teenagers trying to survive in an abusive segregated reform school in Talahasee, Florida. The film is shot almost entirely in first-person perspective.
‘Nickel Boys’ had its world premiere at the 51st Telluride Film Festival and is set to open the 62nd New York Film Festival.
Starring in the film are Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
Release Date
Directed by RaMell Ross, ‘Nickel Boys’ opens in select US theaters on December 13, 2024.
Synopsis
Elwood Curtis’s college dream shatters alongside a two-lane Florida highway. Bearing the brunt of an innocent misstep, he’s sentenced to the netherworld of Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory sunk deep in the Jim Crow South. He encounters another ward, the seen-it-all Turner. The two Black teens strike up an alliance: Turner dispensing fundamental tips for survival, Elwood, clinging to his optimistic worldview. Backdropped by the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, Elwood and Turner’s existence appear worlds away from Rev. Martin Luther King’s burnished oratory. Despite Nickel’s brutality, Elwood strives to hold onto his humanity, awakening a new vision for Turner.
Director RaMell Moss talked about the film’s unconventional visual of telling the story in a first person perspective in a Vanity Fair interview, saying, “The film is conceived as all one-ers. In one scene, we shot everything from Elwood’s perspective, and then everything from Turner’s—one from the first hour, and then the other for the second. Very rarely did we shoot both perspectives on a scene, though, because of the way it was written and scripted. We don’t always go back and forth. So it’s shot like a traditional film, except the other character is not there. They’re just asked to look at a specific point in the camera.”
Reviews
David Ehrlich in an IndieWire review gave the film a score of A, calling it “As major and memorable an achievement as any American film this decade.”
Lovia Gyarkye in a Hollywood Reporter review also praised the film, writing, “The commitment to this way of storytelling imbues Nickel Boy with an overwhelming intimacy and becomes another way that Ross, as a filmmaker, stretches what it means to represent Black people.”
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for ‘Nickel Boys’.