Nickel Boys (12A)

In the early 1960s in America’s Deep South, teenager Elwood tis sent to the Nickel Academy (a brutal reform school based on a notorious real-life institution). Despite the school’s cruelty, he makes a connection with Turner, as they find a way to squirrel hope against the odds. As the former students reconnect later in life, we are witnesses not only to the scars left by their youth, but also the healing power of human connection. Artist RaMell Ross (who previously made the beautiful documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening) has movingly adapted Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as a well to visually express how it felt in Civil Rights era America, and articulate the long shadow of trauma and the power of hope.