Steven McQueen-Photo credit Paul Greenwood

Historical drama Twelve Years a Slave, directed by former Goldsmiths alumnus Steve McQueen won the Golden Globe for Best Drama Sunday evening.

The film, produced by Brad Pitt and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Fassbender and a short appearance by Pitt himself, has been tipped for success at this year’s Oscars.

McQueen completed a BA in Fine Art in 1993. His first feature film Bear, about two naked men in a sparring match, featuring McQueen himself, was made in his graduation year.

Other notable films written and directed by McQueen are Hunger (2008), about the 1981 Maze Prison hunger strike led by Bobby Sands, and Shame, a controversial film about sex addiction, both of which starred Michael Fassbender.

Part of the Young British Artists (YBA) generation that also included Goldsmiths graduates Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Sam Taylor-Wood,  McQueen is no stranger to accolades. He won the Turner Prize in 1999, a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer and a Camera d’Or for Hunger in 2008.

McQueen also represented Britain at the 2006 Venice Bienale, was awarded an OBE in 2002 and a CBE in 2011.

Twelve Years a Slave is adapted from the 1853 memoirs of Solomon Northrup, a free black American man who was drugged, kidnapped and forced into slavery in Louisiana in 1841.

McQueen resides in Amsterdam with his wife and two children.