“Nickel Boys” will open the 2024 New York Film Festival on Sept. 27, Film at Lincoln Center announced on Monday. Directed by RaMell Ross, who also wrote the screenplay with Joslyn Barnes, “Nickel Boys” is adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel. The film is produced by Plan B Entertainment’s Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner as well as Barnes and David Levine.
The film stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson as teenagers in Jim Crow-era Florida who endure barbaric abuse while wards of a juvenile reform center that Whitehead based on the notorious Dozier School, which was run by the state of Florida from 1990-2011. Over years of investigations, forensics documented nearly 100 deaths at the school and discovered almost as many unmarked graves on the school’s grounds.
Other members of the film’s cast include Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
“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,” Ross said in a statement. Referring to his Oscar-nominated 2018 documentary about a Black community in Hale County, Alabama, he continued, “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.”
The New York Film Festival’s Artistic Director Dennis Lim said via statement, “’Nickel Boys’ signals the emergence of a major filmmaking voice. 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.”
Film at Lincoln Center will be announcing further titles that will be shown at the 62nd New York Film Festival in the coming days. The festival will run from September 27-October 14 2024. Last year, Todd Haynes’ “May December” played on Opening Night.
Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures will release “Nickel Boys” in theaters on October 25.
