RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys to Open New York Film Festival

Every year, the film industry descends on New York for the last major event of the film-festival season, kekeing about movies screened at Cannes five months prior, debating awards-season over-unders for flicks that bowed at Lincoln Center, and attending nightly Central Park Boathouse after-parties serving suspicious raw oysters that have marinated on the self-serve buffet for God knows how long. And now, the run-up to the 62nd New York Film Festival is in full swing. An adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Nickel Boys will open the two-week celebration, Film at Lincoln Center has announced. RaMell Ross directs the harrowing story about a powerful friendship between two Black boys who meet at a violent juvenile-detention center in Jim Crow–era Florida.

The film marks the director, writer, and visual artist’s fiction debut after he stunned audiences with his delicate experimental documentary, the Oscar-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening. “Nickel Boys signals the emergence of a major filmmaking voice,” said Dennis Lim, the festival’s artistic director. “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.” Additional selections for the festival, running from September 27 to October 14, will be announced in the coming weeks.

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