'Nickel Boys' Movie, Based on Florida's Abusive Dozier School, Launches in Tallahassee

Filmmaker RaMell Ross premiered his Tallahassee-set film Nickel Boys Thursday night, the first screening in the city after its debut in other locations, months after Florida approved millions in restitution for boys tortured at the reform school that inspired the story.

Ross, 42, spoke to The Floridian by phone after Florida A&M University hosted a special screening of Nickel Boys at Tallahassee's IMAX Challenger Learning Center. He discussed his two-hour film, based on Colson Whitehead's 2019 book of the same name, and its connection to Florida's Dozier School for Boys, a now-shuttered reformatory school wrought with beatings, sexual assault, and death.

"I think it's just as much of a story of not underestimating people's tolerance of other people's suffering," he said Friday, touching on the "conspiracy of silence" that allowed Florida locals to turn a blind eye to the atrocities at Dozier, called Nickel Academy in his film.

"The people in the community knew, but they accepted it," Ross continued. "And for those who aren't around, and don't hear the whispers as often, it's just easier to ignore."

The Dozier School operated from 1900 to 2011, with campuses in Marianna—where Nickel Academy is set—and Okeechobee. During that time, nearly 100 boys died, many of them buried in unmarked graves that researchers are still exhuming. Despite spending four years attempting to locate the bodies, many remains discovered by the University of South Florida have yet to be identified.

The school was listed as a reformatory school for troubled or violent boys between the ages of 13 and 21, though allegations of physical, mental, and sexual abuse inflicted by staff plagued the institution for decades. It wasn't until then Gov. Charlie Crist in 2008 ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the Dozier School that the school finally closed—after a federal investigation—in 2011.

In 2017, lawmakers issued a formal apology and approved $1.2 million to cover reburial and memorial costs. During the 2024 session, they approved $20 million in restitution to be divvied up between the 300 to 400 surviving victims, meaning each can receive around $50,000.

Ross called it a small "appetizer" to what should be an "entree" of reparations.

"$20 million is a pretty nice start, maybe an appetizer to what would hopefully be a nice entree," he said.

Ross, who lives in Rhode Island, hadn't heard of the Dozier School until he got an advance copy of Whitehead's book in 2019. After reading it, he notes how surprised he was that it had never "crossed my purview." Production on the film began in 2022 in nearby Louisiana due to Florida's lack of film tax incentives for movie makers.

Nickel Boys follows two African-American boys at the Marianna reform school: Elwood Curtis from Tallahassee and Turner from Houston. Set in the Jim Crow south between 1962 and 1967, the movie alternates between first-person point of view shots of the two teens as they confront the horrors of Nickel Academy.

Though the movie has yet to hit all theaters, award nominations have begun rolling in, including, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director, the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Feature, and Critics' Choice Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

It has an impressively high 90% on the popular movie review site Rotten Tomatoes.