FREE COMMUNITY SCREENING and DIRECTOR Q&A

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys chronicles the close bond of two Black teenagers who become wards of a juvenile reformatory in 1960s Florida. As truths unfold, their profound friendship offers transformation and awakens hope. Academy Award® nominee RaMell Ross directs the film, which stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

The Florida Institute for Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science (IFAAS) at the University of South Florida is proud to partner with Orion Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios for this special screening of the award-winning film and a post-film panel discussion with filmmaker RaMell Ross, forensic anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle, and journalist Ben Montgomery, moderated by WUSF Radio’s Mark Schreiner.

RaMell Ross is the Academy Award® Nominee for and the director/co-writer of Nickel Boys. As an artist, filmmaker, writer, and liberated documentarian, he has been awarded an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, Howard Foundation Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship and was a 2022 Solomon Fellow at Harvard University. His feature experimental documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and 2020 Peabody Award. It was nominated for an Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards and an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film. RaMell holds degrees in Sociology and English from Georgetown University and is an associate professor in Brown University’s Visual Art Department. His work is in various public and private collections such as the Museum for Modern Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the High Museum. His book Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body was shortlisted for the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation photobook award.

Erin Kimmerle is a forensic anthropologist and the Executive Director of the Florida Institute for Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science at the University of South Florida. She led the investigation into the deaths and unmarked burials of boys at the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, which resulted in the location and identification of 55 burials. She is also the author of We Carry Their Bones, the true account of the research and effort to locate burials at the former reform school.

Ben Montgomery is an investigative journalist and author of four nonfiction books, including the NYT-bestselling Grandma Gatewood’s Walk. His series on the Dozier School, with Tampa Bay Times colleagues Waveney Ann Moore and Edmund Fountain, won a Dart Award, Casey Medal and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting.

Mark Schreiner (moderator) is the assistant news director and intern coordinator for WUSF News, overseeing news coverage during the midday and All Things Considered in the afternoon, as well as WUSF’s education coverage and news interns. Before that, Mark worked as an anchor, reporter, assignment editor, and producer at radio stations in Tampa and his native Chicago since 1992. He has won a number of honors as a reporter, including a pair of regional Edward R. Murrow awards, a Silver Telly award for the documentary, “Plant City Goes to War,” and multiple awards from the Associated Press Florida Broadcasters, the Florida Association of Broadcast Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists.

This free community screening is held in the Historic Duncan Auditorium. Seating is first-come, first-served; no ticket is required.