Nickel Boys

Tallahassee, Florida, 1960s: young African-American Elwood Curtis is doing well in school, but everything goes wrong when he is falsely accused of involvement in a car theft. He is sent to the segregated reform institution Nickel Academy, where they will ‘correct’ him. Sadistic school headmaster Spencer and his harassing assistant Harper personally oversee this. Once in that hell, Elwood befriends Turner, who has been at the asylum for some time. The two realise that only together can they endure this ordeal.

Between 1900 and 2011, juvenile offenders were sent to Florida's Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a dreary institution where abuse, humiliation and rape were the order of the day. Colson Whitehead wrote the novel Nickel Boys about it, now filmed by RaMell Ross. This feature debut shows racism in all its ugliness, but also portrays the unbreakable friendship of two black boys who cannot be disparaged.