‘Nickel Boys’ Director/Co-Writer RaMell Ross & Stars On “Experimental Monument” Of Oscar-Nominated Civil Rights-Era Drama & Power Of Trust

deadline.com:

“I think about the film as a place to do, as I like to say, make an experiential monument,” says Nickel Boys director/co-writer RaMell Ross of the Oscar-nominated the Florida-set Jim Crow-era drama adapted from Colson Whitehead’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. “To elevate your schoolboy story to a place of historical reckoning for an audience where you guys have an experience that’s like, as visceral as you smelling something, smelling the air after a storm, or you rolling in the grass or feeling the sun on your skin,” the filmmaker asserted. “Where it’s something you try to explain to someone and they’re like, dude, you were just rolling in the grass and you’re like, but you don’t understand.” With acclaimed actors Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson onstage with him and Deadline Executive Editor Dominic Patten moderating, Ross was speaking on a rainy Thursday at an enthusiastically attended screening of Nickel Boys at the London West Hollywood.

Watch the conversation here: Ross’ first narrative feature project, the Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor co-starring Nickel Boys is nominated for both Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards next month.

While fiction is brand new territory for Ross, who wrote the Nickel Boys script with longtime collaborator Joslyn Barnes, he was actually previously nominated for an Oscar in 2018 for his searing documentary Hale Country This Morning, This Evening.

A National Society of Film Critics winner, the strikingly original and inventive Nickel Boys from Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios also scored BAFTA and Spirit Awards nominations on the road to the Academy Awards.