Today it was announced that RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” will open the 62nd New York Film Festival on September 27. It’s almost certainly going to Telluride as well. Not sure about Venice, but we’ll find out tomorrow.
This adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel has been loaded with Oscar buzz for months. “Nickel Boys” stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
Per Monday’s announcement, “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’ 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.”
The film follows two boys 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.
This is RaMell Ross’ fiction debut. He previously hailed the poetic and visually stunning documentary ‘“Hale County This Morning.” Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures will release “Nickel Boys” in theaters on Friday, October 25.