A director capable of uncommon grace and savage beauty, with Hunger and Shame
Steve McQueen brilliantly addressed the objectification of human bodies, the struggle between physical degradation and spiritual resistance. In the uncompromising 12 Years A Slave, McQueen approaches slavery from a personal and historical perspective, showing the abject horrors inflicted upon African-Americans in unflinching detail.

Based on the memoirs of Solomon Northup, McQueen’s masterful film about freedom and suffering, love and death, broadens Northup’s personal story into the tale of the countless black slaves whose bodies and souls were beaten down. Chiwetel Ejofor is Northup, a free and educated family man kidnapped by slavers in 1841. As Northup is worked and sold, he encounters many facets of human cruelty, among them the vicious commercialism of slave trader Paul Giamatti, the passivity of empathetic but cowardly plantation owner Benedict Cumberbatch, and the bone-chilling sadism of
cotton grower Epps (Michael Fassbender), a drunk who rapes and whips his slaves before shaking the Bible at them, intoning: “There is no sin. Man does how he pleases with his property”. McQueen’s cinematography contrasts with the unrelenting viciousness of Northup’s reality. Black flesh is whipped into a red mist, genteel Southern drawls enunciate the ‘n’ word with relish. McQueen also understands the power of silence, particlarly in a heart-stopping lynching scene, in which Northup is left hanging for three minutes as slaves around him continue working, not daring to intervene.

McQueen confronts the past with open eyes. This masterpiece reminds of us of the horrible events that created modern America. It’s a story that must be told so that it’s never be repeated.