Nickel Boys

Hale County This Morning, This Evening director RaMell Ross vividly adapts Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

The screening on Friday 17 January 20:15 NFT2 will be introduced by Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society at University College London (UCL).

  • Director

    RaMell Ross

  • With

    Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

  • USA 2024. 140min

  • Digital 4K

  • Certificate

    12A

  • A Curzon Film/Amazon MGM Studios release

In his transcendent narrative feature debut, RaMell Ross brilliantly employs an innovative approach, offering multiple layers and lenses to a moving adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. In 1960s Tallahassee, intelligent and idealistic teenager Elwood is found culpable, via a stranger he randomly encounters, for a crime he had no part of. He is sent to the Nickel Academy, a cruel reformatory for Black students, who are segregated and subjected to racism and abuse. Elwood meets Turner, a smart but more cynical kindred spirit, who guides him through the school and becomes his best friend. Strikingly employing a first-person perspective, Ross places us at the heart of the kaleidoscope of memories that make up Elwood and Turner’s story. The result is a unique and powerful cinematic experience, employing haunting, dream-like images that contrast with the brutality of a prejudiced world.

Kimberley Sheehan, Film and Events Programmer

Contains scenes of racism, violence and distressing themes.

Audio Description available at all screenings.

The screenings on Sunday 19 January 12:30 NFT4; Monday 20 January 14:30 NFT4; Tuesday 21 January 20:20 NFT2; Wednesday 22 January 17:40 NFT2 will be presented with additional Descriptive Subtitles of non-dialogue audio.