RaMell Ross directs an adaption of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about two friends attempting to survive the harshness of a segregated reform school in 1960s Jim Crow-era Florida.
 
Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) is a young African American boy being raised by his grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) in 1960s Jim Crow-era Florida. A talented and hardworking student, Elwood’s future looks promising until he is falsely accused of a crime and sent to a segregated reform school. While attending the school, he meets a boy named Turner (Brandon Wilson) and the two become fast friends, attempting to survive the harshness of their reality together.

Critics and audiences alike have been raving about Ross’ fictional feature debut. Shot entirely from the two boys’ perspectives, Nickel Boys is an innovative and daring work the likes of which rarely emerge. David Canfield for Variety writes, ‘Like last year’s The Zone of Interest, it all but reinvents the language for movies about a particular, dark historical chapter’.