Trauma changes your memories. When I think of traumatic experiences in my life — what happened, how I felt before that moment, how I felt afterward, the changes I’ve noticed in myself since — they often play in short bursts. Those bursts are rarely sequential, and the length of time they last depends on how long I allow myself to linger on a memory.
Filmmaker RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is a record of trauma. It tells the story of two Black boys’ experience at an abusive reform academy in Jim Crow-era Florida. The fictional Nickel Academy is inspired by an actual place, Florida’s Dozier School for Boys, where students received brutal treatment at the hands of staff. A 2012 investigation by the University of South Florida uncovered dozens of human burial sites on the property.
Ross does something unique with this story about trauma, memory, and how they relate to each other: He makes it feel authentic.
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