Based on a story of Jerry Cooper. In 1961, a 16-year-old White teen ran away from home, hitchhiked in a stolen car, was charged with car theft and sent to the Florida's Dozier School for Boys, where he was subjected to brutal beatings and witnessed sexual abuse and murders committed by the staff.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, director RaMell Ross states ""The film is conceived as all one-ers. In one scene, we shot everything from Elwood's perspective, and then everything from Turner's--one from the first hour, and then the other for the second. Very rarely did we shoot both perspectives on a scene, though, because of the way it was written and scripted. We don't always go back and forth. So it's shot like a traditional film, except the other character is not there. They're just asked to look at a specific point in the camera. Typically, the other actor is behind the camera, reading the lines and being the support to make the other person feel like they're actually engaged with something relatively real. Because they're all one-ers, though, the choreography is quite difficult."