RaMell Ross' Nickel Boys will open the 62nd New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall on September 27, the festival's umbrella organization, Film at Lincoln Center, announced Monday.

The film adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in the story of two black teenagers who become inmates of a brutal juvenile detention center in Jim Crow-era Florida. In the harrowing tale inspired by true events, their close friendship helps them maintain hope even as the horrors mount around them at the Nickel Academy, which becomes a microcosm of American racism in the mid-20th century. Their breakthrough performances “cut to the bone,” says NYFF.

Also starring are Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

"Nickel Boys signals the emergence of a major voice in film," said Dennis Lim, the festival's artistic director. "RaMell Ross's fictional debut, like his previous work in photography and documentary, pushes the boundaries of what visual language can do, pushing it to new places. It's the most daring American film I've seen in a long time, and we're thrilled and honored to open the New York Film Festival with it."