Steve McQueen is a director of blunt conviction when it comes to his characters and their stories. Only suitable than that his adaptation of Solomon Northup’s biography 12 Years a Slave be one that pulsates with injustice from the horrors of the slave trade, and a stirring admiration for the bravery of Northup’s conquering of the hell which befell him.

Much like his Hunger and Shame, McQueen does not allow 12 Years a Slave to be viewed with rose tinted glasses, but does allows both the horrors and the resilience of humanity to those horrors to permeate. In the end McQueen forces to watch what we were, and what it takes to never become again.