A new featurette to the upcoming Steve McQueen film "12 Years a Slave" has been released.
Yahoo! movies released a feature in which director McQueen and star Chiwetel Ejiofor speak about the film and the plot of the movie. The featurette also reveals a number of new scenes, which were not shown in the trailer, as well as Hans Zimmer's score for the movie.
"12 Years a Slave" tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, who is abducted and sold into slavery. The film recently premiered at the Telluride Film Festival where it received rave reviews with some critics stating that it was the front runner for the Best Picture. Peter Debruge of Variety wrote, "This epic account of an unbreakable soul makes even Scarlett O'Hara's struggles seem petty by comparison."
Eric Kohn of the Indiewire gave the movie an A+ and wrote, "... a particularly noteworthy advancement in McQueen's already impressive filmography that funnels the cerebral formalism of his earlier features into a deeply involving survival narrative."
William Goss of Film.com wrote, "Northup's story was a true, terrible thing, and by virtue of telling it, the burdens of all American slaves are unflinchingly realized by Ejiofor and McQueen alike."
The film marks McQueen's third movie, as well as his third collaboration with actor Michael Fassbender. The duo also worked on McQueen's first film "Hunger" and 2011's "Shame."
"12 Years A Slave" will be released by Fox Searchlight, which is slowly building momentum by releasing the movie in limited release and gradually expanding nationwide. The new film also stars Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson, Bard Pitt, Quvenzahne Wallis, Dwight Henry, Alfre Woodward and Michael K. Williams. The film will be released on Oct. 18 and is rated R for violence/cruelty, some nudity and brief sexuality.