12 Years a Slave

Saratoga Springs, New York, 1841. Solomon Northup, the free-born African American son of a freed slave, finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Abducted and sold into slavery, Solomon ends up in the sugarcane and cotton plantations of antebellum Louisiana, doomed to work his fingers to the bone away from his wife and two kids. Sold to the highest bidder, Northup adopts a new identity and does everything he can to survive a succession of hardened deep-South enslavers bent on breaking his spirit. But as the weeks turn into years, a ray of hope shines in the shape of a benevolent abolitionist who crosses paths with the forsaken captive. And after twelve cruel years of soul-crushing slavery, Solomon finally sees his family again.