Nickel Boys (15)

A superlative adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Nickel Boys tells the story of Elwood, a black teen sent (for a crime he didn’t commit) to the hellish Nickel Academy Elwood befriends fellow student Turner and together they find a way to squirrel hope against the odds. Documentary maker RaMell Ross launches into feature filmmaking with this audacious and profoundly moving tale of a mid-century reform school, based on a notorious real-life institution. He uses an entirely visual means to explore not only what happened, but also how it felt, finding a new language to speak about the long shadow of trauma, one that leaves cliché behind. Pushing the painful to the margins, just as its characters do, this is impressive filmmaking.