11/14
Plot
Elwood Curtis’ college dreams are shattered along a two-lane Florida highway. Bearing the burden of an innocent misdemeanor, he is sentenced to the underworld of Nickel Academy, a brutal reform school nestled in the Jim Crow South. He meets another ward, the all-seeing Turner. The two black teenagers form an alliance: Turner offers basic survival advice, while Elwood clings to his optimistic worldview. Against the backdrop of the emerging Civil Rights Movement, Elwood and Turner’s existence is worlds away from Rev. Fr. Martin Luther King’s Burnished Oratory. Despite Nickel’s brutality, Elwood tries to cling to his humanity and awakens a new perspective in Turner.
