RaMell Ross: Cinema’s next great director

Posted On March 29, 2025March 29, 2025

There is a blatant lack of opportunities for emerging directors in the film industry, with a media landscape that is ruled by Hollywood titans and little space for anyone who didn’t establish their career in the 1990s. All the jobs in the business trickle upwards towards the likes of Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan and the Russo brothers, adding nothing particularly new to the medium, while genuinely new voices are scrambling for the chance to be noticed, fighting for entry-level jobs and boring opportunities at the bottom rung of the ladder.

Thus, it has never been more difficult for first-time film directors to create a feature film, with very few funding bodies willing to risk their precious millions to help nurture new talent and showcase under-seen stories. And so, whenever an artist is able to rise above these hurdles and share their work, it is hard to ignore, and even more impressive when it outshines the films created by directors who have been haunting the industry for decades.

The 2025 Oscars ceremony was host to a number of surprises and curveballs, with the Academy perhaps picking up on their floundering reputation and choosing public favourites to temporarily boost their image as a progressive, creative institution. This led to them opting for an awards sweep for the team behind Anora, despite the subsequent discourse about the story’s portrayal of sex workers and Baker’s intentions behind his frequent focus on this community.

However, while many people were rooting for Anora, I personally was hoping to see the Academy recognise the insurmountable talents of RaMell Ross and his exquisite debut feature, Nickel Boys.

The film follows the friendship between two young Black boys who are sent to a brutal reform school in Florida, charting their harrowing experiences and the strength of their bond. Nickel Boys is delicate, careful and extremely tender, contrasting the restraint of the visual style with the implied horrors that lie just outside of each frame. Each shot is deliberate and intentional, with every image communicating the innocence of these boys and the cruelty they cannot escape, something that is exaggerated through the immersive decision to shoot the entire story from a first-person POV.

Each aspect of the film is constructed in a deeply intelligent way, with layers of meaning embedded in the simple sight of a knife scraping frosting onto a cake or a gaze averted towards the ground to avoid conflict. Ross is intent on creating an evocative portrait of how this experience feels instead of trying to create a conventional narrative, allowing for an inescapable story that quite literally places us in the shoes of its protagonist.

It is almost impossible to comprehend that this was Ross’ debut feature, with the director displaying a technical and emotional understanding of the medium that transcends his experience, showcasing him as one of the most captivating new directors in Hollywood and a person whose stories demand to be felt. The director announced that he is appealing to philanthropical funds to create his next films, which feels like a completely dystopian thing for an Oscar-nominated director to have to do (but speaks volumes about the current state of the film industry). But, given the chance, he will surely become one of the next great directors to emerge from the independent filmmaking scene.