Adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s ‘Nickel Boys’ to open New York Film Festival this fall

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“Nickel Boys,” an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, will open the 62nd New York Film Festival in September, organizers said Monday.

Filmmaker RaMell Ross directed the drama based on the 2019 novel about two Black teenagers in an abusive reform school in Florida in Jim Crow-era Florida. Whitehead used the real Dozier School for Boys, and its victims, as a model. The cast includes Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

“’Nickel Boys’ signals the emergence of a major filmmaking voice,” said Dennis Lim, the festival’s artistic director, in a statement. “RaMell Ross’ fiction debut, like his previous work in photography and documentary, searches for new ways of seeing and, in so doing, expands the possibilities of visual language. It’s the most audacious American movie I have seen in some time.”

Ross is best known for the documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” which followed Black residents in Alabama’s Hale County and was nominated for an Oscar in 2019. The film, from Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures, will open the festival on Sept. 27 before hitting theaters on Oct. 25.

The New York Film Festival, presented by Film at Lincoln Center, runs through Oct. 14.