Award winning novel The Nickel Boys is now a film and today Curzon Film release the UK Trailer. It’s now time to meet the boys…
The film marks RaMell Ross sophomore directorial feature based on Colson Whitehead‘s Pulitzer Winning book of the same name. Starring Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson as our African American young men who take centre stage of the film.
The Nickel Boys takes us back to the 1960s, Tallahassee USA . Elwood Curtis is sent to the reformatory Nickel Academy, Florida for a crime he didn’t commit. Fast forward to the present day, New York. The abuse of the students has been revealed leading Curtis to remember his life-changing friendship with Jack Turner.
I haven’t read the book yet, from what I’ve read there won’t be a dry eye left by the end of the film. Another part of secret American History now exposed, racism and trauma rearing it’s ugly head.
Elwood Curtis’s college dream shatters alongside a two-lane Florida highway. Bearing the brunt of an innocent misstep, he’s sentenced to the netherworld of Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory sunk deep in the Jim Crow South. He encounters another ward, the seen-it-all Turner. The two Black teens strike up an alliance: Turner dispensing fundamental tips for survival, Elwood, clinging to his optimistic worldview. Backdropped by the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, Elwood and Turner’s existence appear worlds away from Rev. Martin Luther King’s burnished oratory. Despite Nickel’s brutality, Elwood strives to hold onto his humanity, awakening a new vision for Turner.
The film also stars Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. Nickel Boys will be released in the UK and Ireland from 8th November. The film will make it’s UK Premiere at BFI London Film Festival on 14th October [more info/buy tickets].
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