Solomon Northup’s Odyssey

Based on the 1853 memoir of a Northern black man kidnapped into slavery, Gordon Parks’s Solomon Northup's Odyssey predates Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave by almost three decades. Made for television, with a modest budget, it is less brutal than McQueen’s version, and, as critic Bilge Ebiri wrote, it contains “a somber lyricism that’s hard to shake. The outrage is still there, just more muted and given more historical context.”