In the first of our annual Oscar hustings, here why RaMell Ross’s incredibly tender film of Colson Whitehead’s novel should take the top prize

The idea of praising a film for being beautiful is understandably suspect. It’s the kind of gushing tribute paid to things that turn out to be lifeless and humourless. But RaMell Ross’s Oscar-nominated film Nickel Boys, adapted from the novel by Colson Whitehead, really is beautiful; it creates beauty and even a kind of complex, defiant joy from generational pain and trauma caused by racism in the postwar United States. Of all the films on this mixed best picture nomination list, Nickel Boys – produced by Dede Gardner, Joslyn Barnes and Jeremy Kleiner– is the film which I’d most like to win, perhaps partly because as a film about the African American experience it for some reason isn’t in the conversation...