The “Nickel Boys” film, based on the Dozier school, is nominated for best picture

A film adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book based on the infamous Dozier School for Boys has been nominated for two Academy Awards.

Nickel Boys, directed by RaMell Ross, received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film is shot almost entirely from the point of view of the boys at the fictional Nickel Reform School in Florida during the Jim Crow era. The events of the film are based on the real Dozier School for Boys.

Hundreds of children who attended Dozier in Marianna and Okeechobee schools were mentally, physically and sexually abused between 1940 and 1975. Dozens were killed. After years of survivors fighting for recognition, the state of Florida finally approved $20 million in compensation for survivors last year.

Ross sat down for an extensive interview about his film with WFSU Public Media earlier this month when he visited Tallahassee for a screening of Nickel Boys hosted at Florida A&M University.

In that interview, he said that the film was shot in POV in part to depict the victims’ experiences as people, rather than shooting a film intended to make the audience see their suffering from afar.

“There is nothing more interesting than giving characters subjectivity. This is very often done in writing. It’s very difficult to do in cinema, and for the Dozier schoolboys it seemed like that gesture was quite fair to give them life, to give them visions when their lives were cut short,” he said.

You can read and listen to WFSU’s entire interview with Ross here. Nickel Boys is playing in theaters now.