12 Years a Slave is Steve McQueen's latest movie, based on the movie's main character Solomon Northup's book of the same name. As the title suggests, it's a movie about slavery in the US, in the mid-1800s. Some people ask, why do we need another movie about slavery? We already know all there is to know about this subject! Well, I might be the only one, but this movie showed me at least one thing I didn't know used to happen – and that is the kidnapping of free black man, to be sold as slaves.

Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an educated, free black man who lives in the 1841 Saratoga, New York, with his wife and two children, and plays the violin for a living. Two white man approach him one day, offering him a job: he accepts, and after he's done, the two men take him out to dinner to celebrate his good work. He gets drunk and feels sick, so the two carry him back to the hotel and put him to bed – but in the morning, he finds himself in a barn, chained, and realising he can't remember how he got there. A white man soon informs him that he's a slave who will soon be taken to the South and sold.

No matter the fact that you already know the life and suffering of black slaves in the States, 12 Years a Slave will still manage to shock and surprise you – starting from the kidnapping and stealing of Solomon's free papers, up to the horrid life and working conditions in cotton plantations. Chiwetel Ejiofor leads the movie masterfully: in the few scenes with his family in the beginning, it's easy to see that he loves his wife and kids very much; in the later scenes, when he doesn't accept the state he's been brought in and is therefore punished by his owners, we understand, better than ever, how hard it actually is for every human being to be forced into slavery; in his isolation from other slaves, we realise how different he is from them, because he never gives up the hope of some day being saved.

While Chiwetel Ejiofor obviously leads the story, the supporting characters are wonderful and complete him in such a way, that this movie can be compared to a beautiful painting, or a delicious dish – everyone does his part and everyone is important. Benedict Cumberbatch is great in portraying Ford, the "good slave owner" – if there ever was such a thing – who forms a nice relationship with Solomon but has to sell him eventually. Michael Fassbender is one of the best, if not the best villain I've seen this year: simply the presence of his character, Edwin Epps, is extremely intimidating, and the way he treats his slaves makes you wish you could personally enter the movie to strangle him. Add to all of this the beautiful and occasionally shocking cinematography, and the wonderful songs the slaves sing while working, and you get one of the best movies of the year.

Rating: 8/10 Read more reviews at http://passpopcorn.com/