“A stunning achievement” —New York Times
Directed by RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys is one of the most acclaimed films of the past year, earning best picture nods from critics circles in Chicago, Boston, L.A., Toronto, and New York, as well as numerous accolades for Ross’ direction and Jomo Fray’s astounding cinematography. The film earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
This remarkably assured adaptation follows Ross’ acclaimed directorial debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, from 2018, which earned him a Peabody Award, an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature, and a Primetime Emmy. He injects his unique non-fiction sensibilities into this take on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Nickel Boys tells the harrowing story of two boys, Elwood and Turner, who are sent to a reform school in Florida during the 1960s. The Nickel Academy is supposed to be a place where troubled youths can be rehabilitated, but instead, it is a place of abuse and corruption, where the boys can only lean on each other to survive.
The film’s stylistic gambit is shooting the entire film from the first-person perspective of the boys; the viewer sees the film as if looking through the boys’ eyes. It’s a rare trick in film—only Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake and Julian Schnabel’s Diving Bell and the Butterfly come to mind—and it’s never been better, or more artfully, executed.
Nickel Boys is also screening at 4 pm on the same day.