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After his Amazon MGM film “Nickel Boys” got a Best Picture nomination, writer/director RaMell Ross is eyeing his next projects — but understands that funding could prove a hurdle.

Ross told The Hollywood Reporter at Sunday’s Oscars that, after making his feature narrative debut with “Nickel Boys,” he knows that financing his indies would be a “philanthropic” venture due to a lack of guaranteed financial return.

“I think I’ve made enough films for people to say that I can make things relatively well,” Ross said. “So I’m asking someone to give me $10 million for two projects. Both of them, I think, have long cultural lives, but it has to be philanthropic because it’s not really a return. But I think they’re deep in meaning and can change a lot of people’s view on the world.”

He added of both potential projects, “They’re written out.

RaMell Ross had strong words about the state of the independent film industry and what he’s looking to post-“Nickel Boys” while on the Spirit Awards blue carpet, speaking to IndieWire Saturday, February 22.

The documentary-turned-narrative director’s “Nickel Boys” (Amazon MGM Studios) is up for two Film Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Feature and Best Cinematography. Dp Jomo Fray had already won that award as of writing for his first-person-perspective dive into a 1960s Florida boarding school where Black students are being abused. Colson Whitehead wrote the novel that inspired the Oscar Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay nominee.

Speaking to IndieWire’s Features Writer Alison Foreman at the Spirit Awards ahead of the night’s ceremony, Ross was asked about the future of theatrical releases for boldly minded independent films like “Nickel Boys.”

“It’s strange because big budget doesn’t necessarily imply theatrical release anymore,” he said.

Every year, I enjoy grilling the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Writers Panel, the smart folks who wrote the best movies of the year. Three of this group of Oscar nominees adapted their screenplays.

For “Conclave” — nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor Ralph Fiennes, and Supporting Actress Isabella Rossellini — Peter Straughan elegantly adapted Robert Harris’ 2016 papal thriller. He captures the political chess game of pitting the pieces against each other, which lets the audience try to follow who’s winning. But he also focused on one cardinal (Ralph Fiennes) and his interior journey facing doubt. Straughan started out as a playwright but moved to writing films like “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” when he figured out how much more money he could make. He did make some cinematic changes: He added more explosions.

For “Nickel Boys,” documentary producer Joslyn Barnes rejoined her “Hale County This Morning, This Evening...

Mikey Madison as Ani and Mark Eydelshteyn as Ivan in ‘Anora’ (Courtesy of Neon)

Hot off the film’s Critics Choice Awards Best Picture win, Anora‘s Sean Baker took home his first DGA Awards win in the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film category. Winners of the 77th Annual DGA Awards were announced on February 8th at a ceremony hosted by filmmaker Judd Apatow in Beverly Hills.

In addition to the competitive categories, Ang Lee was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award and Unit Production Manager Mary Rae Thewlis earned the Robert B. Aldrich Service Award. Unit Production Manager Thomas J. Whelan was recognized with the Frank Capra Achievement Award.

“I am thrilled to congratulate all our nominated directors for their brilliant work, which is visionary, inspirational, and speaks to the depth of the human experience. To be chosen by one’s peers is the true marker of...

When it comes to Oscar nominations, the Academy frequently gets it wrong. I'm not going to waste too much time regurgitating all the ways that awards voters have bungled things, because I think it's common knowledge at this point that more often than not, the Oscars aren't really about rewarding the most deserving art of the year. Instead, movies that land nominations (and wins) often do so thanks to heavy campaign work performed by studios and PR folks. Recency bias is also a huge issue — films that are shown to voters at the end of the year tend to get all the glory, while movies released earlier get overlooked. On top of that, anonymous voters will consistently confess that more often than not, they tend to vote for films their friends worked on rather than stuff that's actually deserving merit. With all that in mind, I try not to let Oscar snubs get me down.

Shot largely from the point of view of its two main characters, RaMell Ross’s masterly film takes you to the wrenching heart of this American south tale of brutal 60s racism

An unwritten rule of cinema is that great books very rarely make great movies. It’s not inevitable that a film adaptation of a literary classic will turn out to be a stinker, but plenty do: take Roland Joffe’s disposable and tawdry version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Brian De Palma’s notorious butchering of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, and my personal nadir, Peter Jackson’s mangling of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. There are ways of side-stepping the curse of the literary adaptation, of course, a recent example being Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, a picture that kept the title and the location of Martin Amis’s novel...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Childhood of a Leader (Brady Corbet)

While Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist slowly starts to expand its theater count, you may be looking to catch up on his directorial debut. Tommaso Tocci said out of its Venice premiere in 2015, ” Before you picture a regular tale of domestic discomfort, however, it should be mentioned that Corbet is aiming for something far sharper and gutsier. Tightly packed in its 35mm, 1.66:1 aspect ratio, every element of the film is dialed up to eleven, with the aforementioned soundtrack making the person next to me curl up in the seat with her ears covered by the film’s unhinged final scene, or Dp Lol Crawley’s dark setups making the most of the crumbling chateau’s creepy atmosphere.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor have never worked together before, but the two bonded like old friends in the latest installment of TheWrap’s longform series Visionaries, in which they spoke about their awards-contending films “Hard Truths” and “Nickel Boys,” why they find it hard to watch their own work and got candid about what it was really like making two films that pushed the boundaries of narrative filmmaking.

Jean-Baptiste reunited with filmmaker Mike Leigh on “Hard Truths” after starring in his 1996 Oscar-nominated film “Secrets & Lies.” In “Hard Truths,” Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a depressed woman struggling through her various interpersonal relationships. But the origin of the project, and Jean-Baptiste’s involvement, was anything but traditional – as it the case with most Mike Leigh films.

“He’s not interested in anything that’s performative or anything that isn’t real. He really is trying to create characters that people recognize from life,...

RaMell Ross has something to say. With his latest film, “Nickel Boys,” the co-writer and director solidifies his reputation as one of contemporary cinema’s most daring storytellers. Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the film unearths the haunting realities of a fictionalized reform school, blending visceral storytelling with an experimental approach that has captured the attention of cinephiles.

Known for his Academy Award-nominated documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” Ross’ unique lens, challenges the conventions of how stories about Black lives are told — and received. In a candid conversation on the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, Ross reflects on the symbolism in “Nickel Boys,” the film industry’s treatment of Black stories, his dream collaborators, and the surprising possibility of working on a Marvel movie.

Listen below:

Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, “Nickel Boys” (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Ross describes “Nickel Boys,” which had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival,...

Jomo Fray can pinpoint the day when the bold idea of “first-person perspective” truly clicked.

The Brooklyn-based cinematographer and his director, RaMell Ross, had spent months discussing, studying, and experimenting for the filming of “Nickel Boys.” Based on Colson Whitehead’s novel, the movie is shot almost entirely through the eyes of its main characters, Elwood and Turner (played by Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson), two young Black men at an inhumane reform school in Florida.

The eureka moment came during a scene when Elwood’s grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) visits the school to deliver bad news to her grandson. “I was the camera operator for that scene,” said Fray. “And as she was building up the courage to tell Elwood something devastating, I looked away. I find it very difficult to look a person in the eyes when I know they’re telling me something that’s difficult for them.

The making of “Nickel Boys” — a film that follows two young Black boys, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), as they navigate a brutal reform school — presented a unique set of circumstances for cinematographer Jomo Fray. While Fray always wants his camerawork to feel vulnerable, director RaMell Ross’ vision of shooting the film with the camera’s first-person point of view blurred the usual roles on set, meaning that Fray would directly interact with the actors.

“It wasn’t just shooting Aunjanue [Ellis-Taylor] playing Hattie,” Fray told Variety at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Monday night. “When the camera needed to imbue Elwood’s consciousness, if I was operating, it was about taking that in and seeing the image, not as Jomo, but as Elwood … Having that physical intimacy fundamentally changes the way you make images.”

Before making the film, Ellis-Taylor, whose character Hattie is Elwood’s grandmother,...

So much of how director RaMell Ross adapted Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel “The Nickel Boys” grew out of his first nonfiction feature film “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.” With that film, Ross, an established photographer, wrestled with how to adapt his still image practice into a single moving image, but also the complexity of the Black experience juxtaposed to the history of the Black image in the South.

While on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Ross talked about how adapting Colson’s novel presented an opportunity to expand on what he accomplished with his groundbreaking “Hale County.”

“One idea Joss [producer Joslyn Barnes] and I had talked about early in the writing process was, what if Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson) had their own cameras to document their own lives at that time?,” said Ross on the podcast. “There’s not much visual poetry from Black folks perspectives that exist in the ’50s,...

“Nickel Boys” writer/director RaMell Ross has already been toasted as a filmmaker to watch this awards season for his acclaimed adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Now, ahead of the film’s premiere, a new trailer is giving more details about the elusive plotline that plays with perspective.

The official synopsis reads: “Elwood Curtis’ 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,...

Fred Hechinger’s dedication to acting all but hinges on his dedication to auteurs. And according to the breakout star of “Nickel Boys,” “Gladiator II,” and “Kraven the Hunter” this holiday season, the line between indies and blockbusters is only really defined by who’s directing.

“I just really believe in movies. I love them so much, and it’s always a kind of trick of timing when two projects that were made in very different contexts in different times come out near one another,” Hechinger told IndieWire of working with RaMell Ross and Ridley Scott for “Nickel Boys” and “Gladiator II,” respectively. “But I think it’s especially exciting when, formally, they’re so opposite. Both of these directors’ work are inspiring, but they’re completely different.”

Hechinger added, “There’s no one way to direct a movie, other than it has to be personal, and it has to...

A groundbreaking adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel from 2019, RaMell Ross’ poetic and visionary Nickel Boys finds its resilient spirit and lyrical temperament in the details. The opening of the film—shot (like the rest of it) in a boxed 4:3 aspect ratio that amplifies its intimately searching feel...

One of the best and most heartbreaking films of the year, “Nickel Boys” marks the narrative feature debut of director RaMell Ross, previously best known for his 2018 film “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.” But the film already shows a deeply singular vision, as Ross uses a unique subjective camera technique throughout to bring the adaptation of the 2019 Colson Whitehead novel to stunning life. It’s a film with great emotional impact, especially when you know how its story — about two young Black boys struggling to survive an abusive reform school — is based heavily on the real-world tragedies of the Dozier School, a Florida reform school notorious for its abuse and murder of several students.

Ross received the Auteur Award at the 2024 IndieWire Honors event, which was held at Citizen News in Los Angeles on Thursday, December 5. Accepting the award, the director gave a lively speech in which he shouted...

On December 5, the IndieWire Honors Winter 2024 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for crafting some of the year’s best films. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the filmmakers, artisans, and performers behind films well worth toasting. We’re showcasing their work with new interviews leading up to the Los Angeles event.

Ahead, “Nickel Boys” star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor shares with IndieWire why working with RaMell Ross, this year’s Auteur Award recipient, made her feel seen and heard like never before.

As told to Marcus Jones. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

RaMell Ross’s intention is something that I feel personally aligned with because he puts an eye on something that’s personal to me, which is Black Southern life.

Most of the time I have felt that I have been the object in the gaze...

On December 5, the IndieWire Honors Winter 2024 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for crafting some of the year’s best films. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the filmmakers, artisans, and performers behind films well worth toasting. We’re showcasing their work with new interviews leading up to the Los Angeles event.

Despite his film being an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel, director RaMell Ross has found it helpful to come out and give an introduction to any “Nickel Boys” screening that he can. “[I tell] people to not look too hard and to not try to figure it out, just to watch the film,” he said to IndieWire over coffee at a Beverly Hills hotel. “They go in specifically knowing the themes, expecting for it to be this really clear narrative, as opposed to something more experiential.

RaMell Ross’ first film, the Oscar-nominated “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” was an unusual project for a director whose day job was as an artist and a teacher at Brown University in Rhode Island. “It was a small art project that converted into a doc,” said Ross, who wasn’t looking to make another movie, much less a narrative film, when “Hale County” was finished.

But Plan B producers Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner came to him and his producer Joslyn Barnes about the Colson Whitehead novel “The Nickel Boys,” a harrowing story based on a real-life Florida reformatory that abused and even killed young Black teens for decades. Ross figured that Gardner’s work on Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” a narrative film with the feel of a giant art project, might make her the right person to help him with a bold film shot almost...

Three top film screenwriters will reveal secrets behind their projects when they join Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&a event with movie contenders. They will participate in two video discussions to premiere on Thursday, Nov. 21, at 6:00 p.m. Pt; 9:00 p.m. Et. We’ll have a one-on-one with our senior editor Daniel Montgomery and a roundtable chat with all of the group together.

RSVP today to our entire ongoing contenders panel series by clicking here to book your free reservation. We’ll send you a reminder a few minutes before the start of the show.

Challengers

Synopsis: Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, transformed her husband into a champion. But to overcome a recent losing streak and redeem himself, he’ll need to face off against his former best friend and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend.

Bio: Justin Kuritzkes’ career has included “Ticklish” and “Queer.”

His Three Daughters

Synopsis: This tense,...

IndieWire, the definitive outlet for creative independence in film and TV, announced on Thursday, November 14 the latest edition of its biannual IndieWire Honors event. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the filmmakers, artisans, and performers responsible for some of the most stellar offerings of this year’s film awards season. In June, IndieWire Honors celebrated its first-ever TV-only edition of the event.

The fourth edition of the event will be celebrated at an intimate cocktail reception taking place on Thursday, December 5 in Los Angeles. Exclusive content, including honoree profiles, will be featured on IndieWire.com beginning November 29 and continue until the awards night, followed by video interviews from the event.

Additional honorees and the event’s host will be announced in the coming days.

“This will be another unforgettable IndieWire Honors, a night unlike any other,” said Dana Harris-Bridson, IndieWire’s Senior VP and Editor-in-Chief.

Several top composers will reveal secrets behind their projects when they join Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&a event with movie score and song contenders. They will participate in two video discussions to premiere on Wednesday, November 13, at 6:00 p.m. Pt; 9:00 p.m. Et. We’ll have a one-on-one with our senior editor Rob Licuria and a roundtable chat with all of the group together.

RSVP today to our entire ongoing contenders panel series by clicking here to book your free reservation. We’ll send you a reminder a few minutes before the start of the show.

The Neon Highway

Synopsis: Wayne, a singer, meets washed-up legend Claude Allen. Together they go to Nashville to pitch a song, but the industry rejects them.

Bio: Lee Brice is a five-time ACM winner for Single of the Year, Song of the Year, and Music Event of the Year.

The 2025 Oscars will be televised live on ABC on Sunday, March 2 next year while the nominations will be announced a couple of months earlier — on January 17. There is a long way to go until then, of course, but, for us here at Gold Derby, it’s never too early to start thinking about the next Academy Awards. With that in mind, here is a list of contenders we think could be potential Best Picture competitors, as well as all the information you need to know about them. (Scroll down for our updated 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Picture.)

One of the early Oscar hopefuls, Greg Kwedar’s docudrama set in a prison, “Sing Sing,” debuted at the 2023 edition of TIFF. Another, Jesse Eisenberg‘s road trip “A Real Pain,” unspooled at Sundance in January. And Denis Villeneuve‘s “Dune: Part Two” was released in March. The latter was a sequel to...

In adapting Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Nickel Boys” from page to screen, documentarian and filmmaker RaMell Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray (“All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”) were determined to make it a viewing experience that allowed audiences the full scope of beauty, terror, tragedy, and redemption experienced by the boys at the center of the novel. To do so, they shot the film almost entirely in first-person point-of-view, employing a range of techniques to create the impression that what you’re seeing is coming directly from the eyes of characters Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson).

“To give subjectivity to the Dozier School boys is fundamentally mind-blowing,” said Ross in a recent interview with Vanity Fair. “In literature, you’re allowed to write from the inside, but at least most cinema is from the outside. This allows them to see and to give them vision,...

Writer-director Cord Jefferson won Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2024 Oscars for turning Percival Everett‘s novel “Erasure” into the critically acclaimed film “American Fiction.” That marked the fourth time in a decade that a film based on a novel won this award. The others: “Women Talking” (Sarah Polley), “Jojo Rabbit” (Taika Waititi), and “Call Me By Your Name” (James Ivory). This is the most common form of adaptation to win. Indeed this award, which dates back to the first Oscars in 1928, has gone to the adapters of 48 novels over the year. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Adapted Screenplay.)

Peter Straughan reaped an Oscar bid in 2012 for his adaptation of John le Carre‘s spy tale “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” His screen version of Robert Harris‘ taut thriller about Vatican intrigue should bring him back to the Oscars.

“Sing Sing” was written by director Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley.

The cast and director of “Nickel Boys,” the Amazon/MGM Studios and Orion/Plan B film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, gathered for a conversation and audience Q&a following a Saturday evening screening at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Los Angeles. Moderator Carla Renata spoke with Oscar-nominated director RaMell Ross and stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson about the importance of telling Black stories, the impact of the themes explored in “Nickel Boys” and why the actors were cast in their respective roles.

Adapted for the big screen by Ross and co-screenwriter Joslyn Barnes, “Nickel Boys” tells the story of two teenagers — Elwood (Herisse) and Turner (Wilson) — living in Jim Crow-era Florida who become friends while enduring physical and psychological abuse as wards of a juvenile reform center called the Nickel Academy. The academy is a fictionalized version of the infamous Dozier School for Boys,...

Amazon MGM and Orion/Plan B have pushed the release date of “Nickel Boys,” and the film will now debut Dec. 13 in New York and Dec. 20 in Los Angeles, the companies announced on Wednesday. The film was originally scheduled to release Oct. 25 in New York City and Nov. 1 in Los Angeles.

Directed by RaMell Ross, who also wrote the screenplay with Joslyn Barnes, “Nickel Boys” is adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel. The film is produced by Plan B Entertainment’s Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner as well as Barnes and David Levine.

The film stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson as teenagers in Jim Crow-era Florida who endure barbaric abuse while wards of a juvenile reform center that Whitehead based on the notorious Dozier School, which was run by the state of Florida from 1990-2011. Over years of investigations, forensics documented nearly 100 deaths at the school and...

RaMell Ross, who directed Nickel Boys based on the Colson Whitehead novel, believes the prolific writer gave his blessing to the film adaptation.

“As far as I know, Colson Whitehead is the writer who, like, wants to write, and do that. And so, I talked with [producers] Jeremy [Kleiner] and Dede [Gardner], like, I can’t believe, you know, he’s letting me do this. I get his email address. Write him an email. A really long one. Overly verbose, I’m sure you can imagine. ‘I always wanted to be a writer’ type of thing. Which is true,” Ross said after a screening of Nickel Boys, which will open the New York Film Festival tonight.

“And then he writes back. ‘Appreciate it, congratulations and good luck.’”

“And at first I was like, literally, way too many words, really. But then, I think, it was just him giving his blessing, which I appreciate.

“Nickel Boys”, which opens the New York Film Festival on September 27, wouldn’t exist without producers Dede Gardner (Plan B) and Joslyn Barnes (Louverture Films). Both women boast enviable track records of finding, backing, and promoting rising talent, along with Gardner’s Plan B partner Jeremy Kleiner, who produced with her the Oscar-winners “Moonlight” and “12 Years a Slave,” as well as Best Picture nominees “The Tree of Life,” “The Big Short,” “Selma,” “Vice,” and “Women Talking.”

Barnes is known in the documentary space for producing Oscar nominees “Strong Island” (Yance Ford) and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” her first collaboration with Brown professor and photographer RaMell Ross. Barnes was finishing “Strong Island” when Ross showed her eight minutes of his project; she resisted at first but eventually became intensely involved in the shoot, archives, and the final edit. Ross sees the world differently than most filmmakers; his rare...

Another batch of films and honorees has been announced for the Middleburg Film Festival. The festival takes place October 17-20 in the small Virginia town located an hour outside Washington, D.C.

The Closing Film will be the Orion/Amazon MGM title, “Nickel Boys,” which chronicles the friendship between two Black teenagers in a young person’s reformatory in Florida during the Jim Crow era. The movie’s Oscar-nominated director and co-writer RaMell Ross will attend to receive the Special Achievement in Filmmaking Award. Ross also happens to be a native of neighboring Fairfax County, Virginia.

The Saturday Spotlight film has been announced as Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch” from Searchlight. The film stars Amy Adams as a woman who halts her career to be a stay-at-home mother but soon finds her life taking a surreal turn. Heller will be at the festival to conduct a Q&a following the screening.

Exclusive: After his narrative directing debut with Nickel Boys, which earned rave reviews following its premiere at this year’s Telluride Film Festival, Oscar-nominated writer-director and acclaimed visual artist RaMell Ross has signed with WME and Jerome Duboz of Ithaka Media for representation. The film is also set to open the New York Film Festival and in October, it will also be shown at the London Film Festival.

The film, which he wrote with Joslyn Barnes, was adapted from the 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead. It is produced by Louverture Films, Plan B and Anonymous Content, and stars Daveed Diggs, Aunjanue Ellis, Ethan Herisse, Fred Hechinger and Hamish Linklater. The film will release theatrically on October 25th for MGM-Orion.

Ross is best known for his documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 2019.

In addition to his filmmaking, Ross...

Now that the fall festivals of Toronto, Venice and Telluride have concluded, a number of anticipated awards season hopefuls have now premiered in front of audiences and critics. Some films that were at one point considered strong contenders are being reevaluated, while other films that were outside of prognosticators’ radars are suddenly looking likely to pick up a nod or two come Oscar nominations morning.

“Joker: Folie à Deux” received a somewhat mixed response in Venice. While critics have generally respected the new tonal direction of the sequel, most agree that it’s not quite as good as the first, which notably won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2019. As a result, the film has dropped out of the top ten in Gold Derby’s combined odds for Best Picture (15th at the time of writing), while star Joaquin Phoenix has dropped out of the top five for Best Actor (now 7th). Lady Gaga,...

“Nickel Boys,” a movie adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from 2019, debuted its first trailer on Thursday — a melodic and riveting slice of life from the perspective of a young man on the other side of unspeakable traumas.

From first-time feature filmmaker RaMell Ross, “Nickel Boys” dramatizes a friendship built in a reformatory school in the Jim Crow South. It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August and is set to open the New York Film Festival on Sept. 27.

From Orion Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios, the drama begins its limited theatrical release on Oct. 25.

Watch the trailer below:

The film’s official synopsis reads as follows:

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,...

Meet the Nickel Boys. MGM + Orion have revealed the first trailer for the film Nickel Boys, which just premiered at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival last weekend. It earned quite a few rave reviews from critics as a follow-up to director RaMell Ross' feature debut Hale County This Morning This Evening (2018). I also included Nickel Boys on my fall festival "10 Films to Keep An Eye On" guide a few weeks ago. Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys chronicles the powerful friendship between two young African American men navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida. Yes this looks like it's wonderful. Nickel Boys stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, & Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. Tremendous! The film is presented mainly from the Pov of the main characters, which gives it an especially distinct look and feel. The initial reviews also state:...

Fresh off its world premiere at Telluride yesterday, here’s the first trailer for RaMell Ross‘ “Nickel Boys.” And given the film’s reception at the Colorado-based festival, expect Ross’ film to get some major attention during the upcoming awards season.

Read More: NYFF 2024: RaMell Ross’ Drama ‘Nickel Boys’ Selected As Opening Night Film

Based on Colson Whitehead‘s 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Nickel Boys” chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenager as they navigate a reform school together in 1960s Florida.

Continue reading ‘Nickel Boys’ Trailer: RaMell Ross’ Festival Favorite Hits Select Theaters On October 25 at The Playlist.

Fresh off its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival last week, Amazon MGM Studios and Orion Pictures released the first trailer for “Nickel Boys,” RaMell Ross’s adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Colson Whitehead novel “The Nickel Boys.”

Here’s the official synopsis for the film, which is expected to be a major awards contender this year:

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...

Documentarian RaMell Ross is turning the camera inward for an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel “Nickel Boys.”

The Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures feature chronicles the powerful friendship between two young African American men navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Jim Crow–era Florida, per the official logline.

The book is fiction, but is based on the true story of a Florida reform school that hid decades of abuse against its residents. The novel alternates between 1960s Tallahassee and the 2010s between two former students who survived the school and revisit what happened on campus amid a university investigation.

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson star as the two young leads; the cast is rounded out by Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who is already getting Oscar buzz for her performance.

“Nickel Boys” is directed by Ross from a script he co-wrote with Joslyn Barnes.

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.

From “Boy A” (the movie that launched Andrew Garfield’s career) to “Zero for Conduct,” movies set in broken boarding schools and juvenile reformatory centers are a dime a dozen. With “Nickel Boys,” director RaMell Ross finds fresh colors in such a rigidly codified genre, turning a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel into a minimalist tone poem. The book by Colson Whitehead is brilliant, but much of it you’ve probably seen before on-screen, so Ross strips away as many of the words as possible, searching instead for images to tell the story of Elwood, a Tallahassee teen who’s so much more than a victim of the system.

Except, Ross doesn’t tell the story so much as inhabit it, to the extent I found myself wondering whether I could have followed the plot — which alternates between the 1960s and the early 2000s — had I not already read Whitehead’s novel.

Back-to-back screenings at the Herzog Theatre in Telluride launched this year’s award season.

First up, Edward Berger’s “Conclave” (Focus) is a taut, sharply written and gorgeously mounted Vatican thriller revealing the arcane process that goes into electing a new pope. The “dean” is appointed to supervise the balloting among the cardinals, and Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) has his hands full. The film is told from his point of view, and we see him suffer under the strain of sundry revelations about the ambitious men who seek the papacy. The two sides line up as conservatives looking to restore the past vs. liberals looking to move forward. The movie based on Robert Harris’s 2016 novel is dominated by Fiennes, who was nominated for two Oscars (“Schindler’s List” and “The English Patient”), but has not been recognized since 1997. He’s getting the headlines in the reviews from Telluride, and the...

“We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.” These are words from the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and they serve as an inspirational catalyst for Colson Whitehead’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Nickel Boys.”

The book, which followed Whitehead’s critically acclaimed “The Underground Railroad,” shadows the gut-wrenching tale of two Black boys, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), negotiating their hard-time served in a severe reform school, Nickel Academy, and attempting to claim, protect and nurture their own humanity in a world that isn’t always kind or welcoming to people of color, particularly Black men.

Now this tale is getting the Hollywood treatment with a screenplay adapted by director RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes. The film,...

RaMell Ross’ arresting narrative debut Nickel Boys does not, like the Colson Whitehead novel on which it’s based, begin with an exhumation. It opens, instead, with signs of life: oranges dangling from the branches of a tree; a hand caressing the grass, a beckoning voice calling “Elwood, Elwood, Elwood” like a song.

Details like these matter in Nickel Boys, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival before it opens New York Film Festival next month, because they mark the passage of time and honor family rituals. Inside the house: glimpses of a gold bracelet wrapped around a delicate wrist, the sound of cards being shuffled and honeyed laughs bouncing off the walls. These details shape memories, eventually ossifying into evidence of an existence.

In his Oscar-nominated directorial debut Hale County, This Morning, This Evening, Ross constructed a stunning and unforgettable portrait of Hale County, Alabama. He sculpted a roughly...

When Telluride Film Festival director Julie Huntsinger introduced “Nickel Boys” at its world premiere screening on Friday night, she didn’t hold back any excitement – not that she has at all in the walk-up to the 51st annual event. “It’s such a towering achievement. I couldn’t believe it. My jaw dropped to the floor,” Huntsinger told Indiewire in an interview published Thursday. “You almost can’t speak after because it’s cinematically engaging, arresting. It is emotionally rewarding. It should be one of the most talked about films of the whole year.”

Based on the response to the film on Friday night, Huntsinger’s prediction might come true. “Nickel Boys,” filmmaker RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel “The Nickel Boys,” had audience members searching for new ways to express their admiration for Ross’s work.

“Thought this was astounding. This is how you...

The 2024 New York Film Festival will open with RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys, it was announced today.

The movie, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

Nickel Boys, which Ross directed from a script he wrote with Joslyn Barnes based on Whitehead’s book, will screen Sept. 27.

Nickel Boys follows two Black teenagers (Herisse and Wilson) unjustly sentenced to a brutal reform school, the Nickel Academy, in Jim Crow-era Florida.

“What an absolute honor for Nickel Boys to open the 62nd New York Film Festival…a daydream really, for the crew, the cast and team who’ve committed so wholeheartedly to its vision,” said Ross, who received acclaim as well as Oscar and Emmy nominations for his 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening. “It feels almost full circle, given Hale County This Morning, This Evening...

We live in strange times. This young century has been defined by harrowing disasters both natural and man-made, political tribalism, and existential threats to the future of the planet. What better time for documentary filmmaking?

Non-fiction cinema has been evolving since the birth of the medium while capturing a world in motion. From the actualités of the Lumière brothers in the late 19th century to the heavily manipulated ethnographic films of the 1920, from the vérité films of the Maysles brothers to the man-on-the-street agitprop popularized by Michael Moore, documentaries have naturally always been more responsive to their times than any other mode of filmmaking.

Not only do they reveal our world to us, but they shape how we view it, and the early years of the 21st century have proven that to be more true than ever before. On one hand, digital technology has infinitely expanded our range of vision,...

The Sundance Film Festival has often been called one of the world’s most important documentary marketplaces, with 39 of the past 65 Best Documentary Feature contenders (60) either beginning or continuing their road to the Oscars in Park City, Utah. Examples include “Summer of Soul,” “Flee,” “Writing With Fire,” “Honeyland,” “The Edge of Democracy,” “American Factory,” “Time,” “The Mole Agent,” “Crip Camp,” “Rbg,” “Of Fathers and Sons,” “Minding the Gap,” and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.”

Two of those–Questlove’s “Summer of Soul” and Netflix’s joint venture with Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, “American Factory”–won the award. Four of this season’s nominees —“All That Breathes,” “Fire of Love,” “Navalny,” and “A House Made of Splinters”—played the festival in 2022. Climate change, human rights violations, competitive mariachi, and manned flight to Mars are only a few of the subjects addressed by this year’s eclectic non-fiction slate.

The youth party culture, as portrayed in the mass media, tends to be driven by a certain debauched and glamorous energy: the clubbing, the drugs, the “freedom,” the your-life’s-a-soap-opera excitement that turns the rituals of hooking up into a flame that lures everyone. But in “Cusp,” a documentary about three small-town Texas teenagers wiling away the summer, the party imperative may be just as compulsive, but it’s the scaled-down, middle-of-nowhere version, where a party is a bonfire and a bunch of dudes standing around with beer and blunts and a jug of moonshine and whatever girls they can get to show up. It’s a slovenly frat house without walls. So unlike the average party you’d see on a reality show, it actually looks as selfish and dangerous as it is.

“Cusp,” the first feature directed by Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt, is a documentary hang-out movie...

First Look Media co-founder Laura Poitras published an open letter Thursday, writing that she’s been fired from First Look, the nonprofit that owns investigative journalism outlet The Intercept and the documentary studio Field of Vision. Poitras said the firing, which happened back in November, came after she publicly criticized The Intercept’s handling of whistleblower Reality Winner. She says the organization is betraying its founding mission to serve as a public watchdog anchored in deep, investigative reporting.

The Oscar-winning documentarian wrote that she was terminated on November 30, ostensibly without cause, but she connected the move to her speaking out about the way The Intercept handled the Winner case. Winner, an Nsa intelligence specialist, in 2017 sent the publication classified documents about Russian meddling in the US election. Federal investigators traced the documents back to Winner before The Intercept published its story; she is serving a five-year sentence for the leak.

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired all U.S. distribution rights to the Lynne Sachs-directed documentary Film About a Father Who, which made its world premiere in January as the opening night film at the Slamdance Film Festival. The film is set to open at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image on January 15, 2021, alongside a retrospective of Sachs’ work. It will also be available in virtual cinemas across the country.

Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, filmmaker Sachs shot 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images of her father, Ira Sachs Sr., a bon vivant and pioneering businessman from Park City, Utah. Film About a Father Who is her attempt to understand the web that connects a child to her parent and a sister to her siblings.

“We’ve long been fans of Lynne Sachs’ films and are very excited to work with her on Film About a Father Who,...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has picked up U.S. distribution rights to Jia Zhangke’s documentary Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue. The Chinese film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February and made its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival earlier this fall. Cinema Guild is eyeing a release for early next year.

Zhangke delivers here a vital document of a changing Chinese society, interviewing three prominent authors—Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua and Liang Hong—born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, respectively, and all from the same Shanxi province where the filmmaker also grew up. In their stories, the dire circumstances they faced in their rural villages and small towns are recounted, and the substantial political effort undertaken to address it, from the social revolution of the 1950s through the unrest of the late 1980s.

“We...