Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Sarah Paulson, Lupita Nyong’o and Alfre Woodard Looking Back on 12 Years a Slave by Jay S. Jacobs Director Steve McQueen's film version of former slave Solomon Northrop's autobiography 12 Years a Slave takes an eye-opening look at one of the great shames of American history, the prevalence of the violent slave trade in the 1700s and 1800s. Northrop was a free man who was claimed as a slave and had to spend over a decade in forced servitud