I am not Black. I will never know what it is like to be Black. Many of us today don’t know what it was like to be Black in 1960s Florida. Luckily, this is why we have movies, which help bring us closer to experiences we can never have. RaMell Ross’s Academy Award-nominated film “Nickel Boys” is one of the best movies of 2024, accomplishing this through a series of filmmaking techniques.

“Nickel Boys” is about a Black teenager named Elwood (Ethan Herisse) whose academic future is extremely promising. His future is so promising that it gets him invited to an all-Black college class while he’s still in high school. However, when he accidentally catches a ride in a stolen car, the police send him away to Nickel Reform School (based on the real-life Dozier School for Boys). 

Ross employs a first-person perspective for nearly the entirety of the film, switching back and forth between Elwood’s eyes and those of another boy named Turner (Brandon Wilson), who Elwood befriends while at Nickel. This film technique is something you don’t see for more than a scene or two, if at all, in most movies, and it is a daring approach that reaps an endless amount of success in captivating the audience. Through the eyes of these young men, Nickel’s practices of torture, assault and murder of its Black students are more visceral and immersive. The use of a carefully selected 4:3 aspect ratio helps to emphasize the first-person effect and claustrophobic feeling of the school. 

Ross also works to remind us that, as these boys attempt to escape this school in a manner that deliberately parallels escape from a slavery-era plantation, the year is 1968. Brief clips of footage from rocket ships and space shuttles are scattered throughout the narrative, emphasizing that while technology has advanced to the point of placing men on the moon from a rocket launched in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Black men are still being held captive, tortured and killed in the very same state. 

With refreshing, original direction and a story that breaks the heart as much as it captivates it, “Nickel Boys” is one of the best films of the last year.