Which Best Picture winner tells the story of Solomon Northup?

Which Best Picture winner tells the story of Solomon Northup? The answer is 12 Years a Slave.

Released in 2013, 12 Years a Slave is a historical drama directed by Steve McQueen and based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir, Twelve Years a Slave. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Northup, a free Black man from New York who is kidnapped in 1841, sold into slavery, and forced to work on Louisiana plantations for 12 years before regaining his freedom.

The film received nine Academy Award nominations and won three: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for John Ridley, and Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong’o. Its Best Picture victory made McQueen the first Black director of a Best Picture winner and the first Black producer to receive the award.

A frequent mix-up is The Color Purple, which also examines Black American life and oppression but tells a fictional story based on Alice Walker’s novel. Glory concerns Black soldiers during the Civil War, while Amistad dramatizes a nineteenth-century legal case involving enslaved Africans. None of those films tells Northup’s autobiographical story.