RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys will be the Opening Night of the 62nd New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall on September 27, the fest’s parent organization, Film at Lincoln Center, revealed today.
The adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in the story of two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow-era Florida. In the harrowing tale inspired by actual events, their 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. Their breakout performances “cut to the bone,” says NYFF.
Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor also star.
“Nickel Boys signals the emergence of a major filmmaking voice,” said the festival’s Artistic Director Dennis Lim. “RaMell Ross’s 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, and we are excited and honored to open the New York Film Festival with it.”
Ross’ Oscar-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which premiered at New Directors/News Films in 2018, portrayed an Alabama community in moments of revelatory intimacy. Nickel Boys, “of equal daring and intensity,” says NYFF, features expressive, shallow-focus cinematography by Jomo Fray (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt), precise editing by Nicholas Monsour (Nope) and deeply felt supporting performances.
Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures will release Nickel Boys in theaters on October 25.
“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. “It feels almost full circle, given Hale County This Morning, This Evening’s selection in 2018’s New Directors/New Films program. The New York Film Festival in particular constellates much of what one aspires toward through filmic production. Since just after my undergrad when I was wooed by the still and moving image, it has been an extraordinary compendium for global aesthetics.”
Ross, an artist, filmmaker, writer, and documentarian, has been awarded an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, Howard Foundation Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship and was a 2022 Solomon Fellow at Harvard University. Hale County This Morning, This Evening, a feature experimental documentary won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and 2020 Peabody Award. It was nominated for an Oscar, and an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film.
RaMell holds degrees in Sociology and English from Georgetown University and is an associate professor in Brown University’s Visual Art Department. His work is in various public and private collections such as The Museum for Modern Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the High Museum.
The 62nd edition of the NYFF will run September 27–October 14, extended by a day from previous fests. Tickets for the general public go on sale September 17 at noon ET, with pre-sale access for FLC Members and Pass holders prior to this date.
The NYFF Main Slate selection committee is chaired by Lim and includes Florence Almozini, Justin Chang, K. Austin Collins, and Rachel Rosen. The announcement of those films is upcoming.