\t\u201cNickel Boys,\u201d RaMell Ross\u2018s adaptation of Colson Whitehead\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel, opened New York Film Festival\u2019s 62nd edition on Friday night. The historical drama, which received rave reviews out of Telluride in September, marks the Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker\u2019s narrative debut.<\/p>\n
\tOn a muggy, overcast evening in the Upper West Side, Ross and the film\u2019s stars \u2014 including Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Daveed Diggs \u2014 walked the carpet at Lincoln Center\u2019s Alice Tully Hall before introducing the film to the nearly-packed theater. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cYou can feel the energy, it\u2019s like Michael Jordan is in the arena,\u201d Ross told Variety ahead of the screening. \u201cIt feels like something crazy is gonna happen in there.\u201d \t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t \t \t\t \t \t\u201cEmotional\u201d might be a more apt descriptor of the screening experience. The two-and-a-half-hour film follows two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow-era Florida. Herisse and Wilson play Elwood and Turner, whose close friendship helps sustain their hope even as the horrors mount around them at the Nickel Academy, which becomes a microcosm of American racism in the mid-20th century.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cAll of RaMell\u2019s work \u2014 as a photographer, a documentarian, a writer, an essayist \u2014 is engaged in the search for new ways of seeing, encountering and understanding the world,\u201d NYFF artistic director Dennis Lim said in his opening remarks from stage.<\/p>\n
\tNYFF chairman Daniel Stern echoed these sentiments, adding that he and the team always choose a film that they feel reflect that year\u2019s state of cinema, and the world at large. The Nickel Boys\u2019 tragic story, he said, felt prescient given the \u201cstate of turmoil\u201d the world finds itself in today.<\/p>\n
\tAfter the screening, guests made their way to Central Park for the annual afterparty at Tavern on the Green. <\/p>\n
\tThe opening was a full-circle moment for many of the film\u2019s cast members who are New York natives and remember looking up to NYFF as the pinnacle of the festival circuit. <\/p>\n
\tWhen asked how he felt to not only be at NYFF, but to be starring in the festival\u2019s opening film, Herisse only had two words: \u201cPinch me!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cNickel Boys,\u201d RaMell Ross\u2018s adaptation of Colson Whitehead\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel, opened New York Film Festival\u2019s 62nd edition on Friday night. The historical drama, which received rave reviews out of Telluride in September, marks the Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker\u2019s narrative debut. On a muggy, overcast evening in the Upper West Side, Ross and the film\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}