Steve McQueen’s latest, 12 Years A Slave, seems certain to get some awards attention in its near future after a successful critical launch at the Telluride Film Festival. While we’ll have to wait until January to see it, you can tide yourself over with a new featurette, which sees McQueen and some of his cast and crew talking about the real story on which the film is based.
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northrup, a free black man living with his family in New York who is tempted by the promise of a regular performing gig by two men from Washington. But once he arrives, he’s drugged, chained and shipped off to a plantation as a slave.
Through the years of his captivity, he meets masters both cruel (Michael Fassbender’s Edwin Epps) and concerned (Benedict Cumberbatch’s William Ford) and struggles to win his freedom, a quest made easier thanks to Canadian abolitionist Bass (Brad Pitt).
That’s just the tip of the casting iceberg for this one, which also boasts Paul Dano, Quvenzhané Wallis, Garrett Dillahunt, Paul Giamatti, Sarah Paulson, Michael Kenneth Williams, Taran Killam, Alfre Woodard and Scoot McNairy.
With screenings planned for the Toronto and Film Festivals and a US release date set for October 18, 12 Years A Slave arrives here on January 24.