‘Nickel Boys’ trailer: First teaser for RaMell Ross’s acclaimed drama [Watch]

Fresh off its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival last week, Amazon MGM Studios and Orion Pictures released the first trailer for “Nickel Boys,” RaMell Ross’s adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Colson Whitehead novel “The Nickel Boys.”

Here’s the official synopsis for the film, which is expected to be a major awards contender this year:

Elwood Curtis’s college dream shatters alongside a two-lane Florida highway. Bearing the brunt of an innocent misstep, he’s sentenced to the netherworld of Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory sunk deep in the Jim Crow South. He encounters another ward, the seen-it-all Turner. The two Black teens strike up an alliance: Turner dispensing fundamental tips for survival, Elwood, clinging to his optimistic worldview. Backdropped by the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, Elwood and Turner’s existence appear worlds away from Rev. Martin Luther King’s burnished oratory. Despite Nickel’s brutality, Elwood strives to hold onto his humanity, awakening a new vision for Turner.

Ethan Herisse stars as Elwood while Brandon Wilson plays Turner. Supporting characters in the film are played by Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. The “King Richard” actress, already an Oscar nominee, is expected to be a top contender in the Best Supporting Actress race this year.

Ross, an Oscar nominee as a documentary filmmaker for “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” shot “Nickel Boys” largely from the first-person perspective – although some scenes shift to the second-person perspective. (A key second-person sequence between Diggs and Craig Tate, arguably the best scene in the film, makes up a large part of the trailer.)

“Nickel Boys” will kick off the New York Film Festival later this month. The movie hits theaters in a limited release on October 25.