"12 Years a Slave" Screens at Toronto Festival, Following Telluride Success

Today Steve McQueen's highly anticipated "12 Years a Slave" is screening at the 38th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in Canada. The film previously premiered at the Telluride Film Festival to rapturous reviews, putting it solidly on an Oscar track.

The film is about a free black man, Solomon Northup, played by the Nigerian-British Chiwetel Ejiofor, who's captured and sold into slavery in the deep South. It takes place during a time in American history where the country was divided, legally and morally, over slavery: some states were free, some slave, and slaveholders had legal rightsto recapture escaped slaves who had gone North. The film is based on the 1853 autobiography of Northup, who was kidnapped in 1841 and released twelve years later.

It stars Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch (also at Toronto with "Fifth Estate"), Paul Giamatti and 2012 Oscar darling Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild).