Nickel Boys

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.

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