Terrence Malick’s Disciples

In the winter of 2024, the photographer and filmmaker RaMell Ross released Nickel Boys, a masterful adaptation of a novel by Colson Whitehead. In a fragmentary, impressionistic style, the film portrays the friendship of two African American teens at a brutal Florida reform academy during the Jim Crow era. Acclaimed as a visionary movie, it ended up on many critics’ best-of-the-year lists and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.