Brad Pitt hopes ’12 Years A Slave’ creates awareness

Brad Pitt wants to bring more awareness to human trafficking.

The scruffy blond-haired star was at the Princess of Wales Theatre Friday for the TIFF red carpet premiere of biopic 12 Years a Slave, the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was sold into slavery during the pre-Civil War era in the U.S.

“Why aren’t there more films about American slavery?” Pitt asked reporters at the screening.

“It’s such a part of our history and part of our DNA, something you can’t deny and in some ways, though we think we understand it and settled it, maybe we haven’t.”

Pitt plays Samuel Bass, a Canadian carpenter in the film, alongside Michael Fassbender — who plays Edwin Epps, a cruel plantation owner — and Benedict Cumberbatch as William Ford, a Baptist preacher and a slave owner.

And while Pitt said as “brutal” as the content is, it’s a “beautiful film.”

“The thing this film does is remind us of our humanity and our responsibility to each other,” he said. “In no other time in the history of this world have there been more people enslaved than today at this time. That’s an incomparable stat.”

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