Set in the stark subjugation of 1960s Florida, Nickel Boys is undoubtedly the most innovative film to make the 2025 Academy Awards’ Best Picture list. Usually found behind a documentary lens, director RaMell Ross brings his mastery of that form to take us inside the characters in this adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel.

In 1962, young African-American Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) is encouraged to look beyond Florida’s slanted Jim Crow-era textbooks by his teacher. As the civil rights movement grows, the worries of the doting grandmother who raised him are realised when he’s convicted of being a car thief’s accomplice when he hitchhikes to a tuition-free accelerated study program.

At the segregated reform school, the Nickel Academy, he and other black students are housed in shabbier dorms and seldom gain release until 18, unlike their white counterparts and despite their good behaviour or the income generated from their labour. As his grandmother’s attempts to get him representation fall through, Elwood falls in with his fellow student Turner (Fred Hechinger) as he secretly compiles a diary of Nickel’s abuses for inspectors. In the future, at 20 and 50-year intervals, an older Elwood follows the news of the graves found at Nickel…

Nickel Boys tackles the horror of its subject head-on, and there’s no narrative device to hold the audience at arm’s length. It’s shot entirely in first-person, through Elwood’s eyes, before we see him for the first time, and the technique extends to Turner after more than an hour. That approach (capturing the frame in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio) is risky and likely to take viewers a while to get used to. But it soon pays off, adding an extraordinary intensity to the life imposed on the lead characters. 

The almost entirely immersive approach and effectively continual one-ers could muddy the film’s message, but it’s no trick or stunt; it’s a valuable tool that Ross wields masterfully to devastating effect. Nickel’s segregation and the devastating effects are peeled back from the eyes of the main characters, and the background pops in the glorious colours picked out by cinematographer Jomo Fray.

The disconcerting voyeurism does break occasionally, but it’s not just a respite or recalibration. The perspective breaks for the mysterious projections into the future, while Elwood and Turner’s life is intercut with montage interruptions of contemporary photos and video. There’s even an audacious full-screen clip of the Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis-starring The Defiant Ones. As a near-contemporary reference, it’s a precursor to the tragic, surprising ending.

Necessarily, the perspective means less time is spent with Nickel Boys’ lead actors, which is likely to limit its awards run and reach. However, caught in the first person, all cast members play their part in a film that leaves the audience in a unique place to consider the consequences. 

Nickel Boys is a landmark piece of filmmaking that confronts film as much as it innovates. Kudos must go to Plan B and Orion for backing an incredible vision that challenges perception in many ways but frequently to devastating effect.