28/29
Elwood Curtis’s college dream crashes on a two-lane Florida highway. After bearing the brunt of an innocent misstep, he is sentenced to the underworld of Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory deep in the Jim Crow South. He meets another protégé, Turner, who has seen it all. The two black teenagers form an alliance: Turner offers vital survival advice, Elwood clings to his optimistic worldview. Against the backdrop of the burgeoning civil rights movement, Elwood and Turner’s existence seems light years away from the polished oratory of the Reverend Martin Luther King. Despite Nickel’s brutality, Elwood struggles to maintain his humanity, awakening a new vision in Turner.