The Oscars have rightly acknowledged the most audacious film of the year

But while it can't be denied that this is, admittedly, a unique combination, the film also has one pretty major problem: it's a complete mess. Indeed, for all the praise that has been lavished upon Emilia Pérez by awards voters and various critics, there are many – this writer included – who found it a bizarre misfire, a film so dramatically inert and tonally all over the shop that the plaudits have been completely baffling.

But there is one film in this year's Best Picture line-up – a surprising but thrilling inclusion – for which the word audacious can be applied with none of those caveats.

That film is Nickel Boys, the fiction debut of filmmaker RaMell Ross, which is adapted from Colson Whitehead's superb Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and tells the story of Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), an African-American teenager who is wrongly implicated in a car theft and sent to a racially segregated reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

While there, he strikes up a bond with a quietly rebellious student named Turner (Brandon Wilson) and tries desperately to search for hope and salvation against a backdrop of unbearable brutality, meted out both by fellow students and the school's deeply racist staff.

A truly original work of heart-wrenching emotional power, what makes the film so remarkable is the highly experimental point-of-view shooting approach adopted by Ross for the entirety of its runtime. Throughout the film, we follow events from the visual perspective of its two lead characters, ingeniously taking the idea of cinema as an empathy machine to its most extreme capabilities.

This unique shooting style takes some adjusting to, but it quickly draws the viewer under its spell and creates a tactile and profoundly immersive experience, one punctuated by both fleeting moments of lyrical beauty and some deeply harrowing scenes.

Meanwhile, Ross also adds several impressionistic flourishes and makes innovative use of archival footage and well-placed flash-forwards, leading to an astounding montage in the closing scenes which will leave most audiences awestruck.

In truth, the film can probably feel short-changed that it didn't receive many additional nominations in other categories. An adapted screenplay nod for Ross and co-writer Joslyn Barnes is welcome, but it's hard to make sense of how the former could have been passed over for a Best Director nomination in favour of, for example, James Mangold – whose Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown is directed competently but almost entirely conventionally.

Cinematographer Jomo Fray also has a right to feel aggrieved about missing out, while it's baffling that Aunjanue Ellis Taylor – whose remarkable performance as Elwood's grandmother in some of the film's most raw, affecting moments is undoubtedly one of the year's best – hardly seemed to get a look in when it came to the conversation around Best Supporting Actress.

Still, the fact that such an experimental and bold film has been nominated at all is cause for celebration, and a further sign that the Academy has gone some way to removing the staid, unadventurous reputation it's been trying for some years to shed. (Similarly, the idea of a twisted, unapologetically gruesome body horror like Coralie Fargeat's magnificent The Substance making it into the Best Picture category would have been almost unthinkable just a few years ago).

What's especially impressive about Nickel Boys' success is how it managed to make the list in spite of what has amounted to a relatively muted awards campaign – especially when compared to many of its big-hitter competitors – and a rather botched release strategy that has seen it flounder at the box office.

With that in mind, hopefully its nomination will encourage cinema-goers around the world to seek out a film that has, so far, been criminally under seen, but has clearly immensely moved the vast majority of those who have been lucky enough to watch it.

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com at the London Film Festival back in October 2024, Ross outlined just a couple of responses he'd seen to the film which he said "hit at the core of [it's] power".

"One woman said that the film is – this is a trigger warning, it's pretty, pretty heavy – is a black woman's nightmare," he explained. "Which was really kind of moving to hear and have her sort of talk through her relationship between loving her sons and fearing when they go outside.

"And then I also had, on the opposite end of the spectrum, a white man say, 'I've never known what it felt like to walk in a black man's shoes, or to look from a black man's perspective', and he's like weeping.

"And there are a couple of other heavy conversations, but [they] haven't been as succinct as those lines. But how beautiful and fascinating and I guess, interesting."

Whatever your specific individual response, Nickel Boys is clearly exactly the type of film that awards ceremonies like the Oscars should be honouring: original, bold, ambitious and impactful, it's one of the finest films to be nominated in years.

Read more:

• Oscar nominations 2025: Full list of Academy Awards nominees
• Why the Oscars battle between The Substance and Anora is so ironic

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