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’s 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.

In breakout performances that cut to the bone, Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson play Elwood and Turner, 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. Ross, whose unforgettable Oscar-nominated documentary HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING (IFFBoston 2018) portrayed an Alabama community in moments of revelatory intimacy, has here fashioned a film of equal daring and intensity, buoyed by expressive, shallow-focus cinematography by Jomo Fray (ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT, Fall Focus 2023), pinpoint-precise editing by Nicholas Monsour (NOPE), and deeply felt supporting performances from Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, and Daveed Diggs.

Inspired by actual events, this harrowing tale comes to vivid life via an ingenious visual approach that brilliantly adapts the novel’s exercise in subjectivity. Ross’s NICKEL BOYS sets the beauty of the natural world against the cruel realities of American racism, and confirms its maker’s status as a visionary cinematic artist.

—New York Film Festival guide