After crafting one of the most remarkable documentaries of the last few years with the Apichatpong Weerasethakul-backed, Sundance-winning, Oscar-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening, director RaMell Ross has moved into narrative fiction with an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed, Pulitzer-winning 2019 novel The Nickel Boys. Going inside the true story of abuses at the juvenile reformatory Dozier School for Boys in Florida, the film features Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Ethan Herisse, Fred Hechinger, Hamish Linklater, Brandon Wilson, and Daveed Diggs.
With cinematography from Jomo Fray, who shot last year’s stunning All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Nickel Boys sees Ross exude stunning formal power once again, telling this story with a unique, sensitive conceit that makes for a radical adaptation and one of the year’s best films. Ahead of the Opening Night premiere at the 62nd New York Film Festival and October 25 release from Amazon MGM Studios, the first trailer has now arrived.
Here’s the NYFF synopsis: “Rare is the film of a major book that maintains the power and precision of its source material while also generating its own singular aesthetic. Yet RaMell Ross’s extraordinary realization of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2019 novel, about two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow–era Florida, achieves just this. In breakout performances that cut to the bone, Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson play Elwood and Turner, whose close friendship helps sustain their hope even as the horrors mount around them at the Nickel Academy, which becomes a microcosm of American racism in the mid-20th century. Adapted by Joslyn Barnes and Ross, whose unforgettable Oscar-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (Closing Night of New Directors/New Films, 2018) portrayed an Alabama community in moments of revelatory intimacy, has here fashioned a film of equal daring and intensity, buoyed by expressive, shallow-focus cinematography by Jomo Fray (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt), pinpoint-precise editing by Nicholas Monsour (Nope), and deeply felt supporting performances from Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, and Daveed Diggs. Inspired by actual events, this harrowing tale comes to vivid life via an ingenious visual approach that brilliantly adapts the novel’s exercise in subjectivity. Ross’s Nickel Boys sets the beauty of the natural world against the cruel realities of American racism, and confirms its maker’s status as a visionary cinematic artist.”
See the trailer below.
The post Nickel Boys Trailer: RaMell Ross’ Stunning, Radical Colson Whitehead Adaptation Arrives in October first appeared on The Film Stage.
