Film
12 Years a Slave
- Director
- Steve McQueen
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 131 mins
Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a free black musician living in mid-19th century New York. Lured to Washington on the promise of some lucrative work, he’s kidnapped and dispatched in chains to Louisiana. To conceal his identity, he’s renamed Platt Hamilton by slave trader Theophilus Freeman (Paul Giamatti) and is sold to plantation owner William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch). The relatively cultured Freeman then sells him on to sadistic racist Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender). Brad Pitt rounds out the exceptional star cast as itinerant Canadian carpenter and abolitionist Samuel Bass, who provides Solomon with a glimmer of hope.
British director Steve McQueen‘s Oscar-winning (three gongs, including Best Picture) follow-up to Hunger and Shame is based on Northup’s own extraordinary memoir, which was originally published in 1853.
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