Cause Magazine There was an extra level of excitement in the air when the Best Picture awards were announced in March 2014. Would the harrowing drama 12 Years a Slave take the top Oscar? Based on the 1853 autobiography of the same name by Solomon Northup, the film tells the story of a free black man who is kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery, working on plantations in the state of Louisiana for twelve years before being released. The powerful film is an unflinching look at the brutality, horror and injustice of slavery. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the lead role and Benedict Cumberbatch co-stars alongside Michael Fassbender, and talented new star Lupita Nyong’o. Brad Pitt appears, too, and is also a producer on the film. The film is intense and audiences are often moved to tears. When the envelope was opened at the 86th Academy Awards, history was made, and Steven Rodney McQueen became the first black filmmaker to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. He had to share it with his other four co-producers, but the vision of the film was entirely his own. (He was nominated for Best Director, but lost to Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity -- the first Mexican to win the award). The movie was shot in just 35 days, with one camera and a budget of about 20 million, and he and his producers weren't even sure that they would find a distributor brave enough to take it. The subject matter is not exactly a good bet as a money maker. In fact, only a handful of films have focused on the subject at all. “There's been a kind of amnesia,” Artist and Filmmaker Steve McQueen
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