Get ready to hear the name Chiwetel Ejiofor a lot. Scratch that: get ready to learn to spell it and pronounce it too. Why? Well, with his starring role in the based-on-a-terrible-true-story film "12 Years a Slave," he's absolutely certain to get a load of new attention from his peers this year.

Ejiofor stars in "12 Years" as Solomon Northup, a real-life New York carpenter and violinist who'd lived his entire life as a free man (this is during the pre-Civil War American era, by the by) until he was tricked into slavery by a couple of gents promising him a job in Washington, D.C. As the title suggests, he spent the next dozen agonizing years of his life under the cruel thumb of one mean "master" after another — Michael Fassbender being the obvious centerpiece of that cruel collective, based on this trailer for the film.

Fassbender reunites with his "Hunger" and "Shame" director Steve McQueen for the pic, so it's certain to offer some poignant exploration of his character's many ills as well, but it'll be Ejiofor who holds the brightest spotlight this time, even as against a bevy of heavyweight supporters (Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti, Alfre Woodard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael K. Williams, Sarah Paulson, Quvenzhané Wallis and Paul Dano among them).

And while one might contend* that the movie-going mind is still too fresh with the recent slave-centric pic "Django Unchained" to distinguish, this movie's based on a real person (and, presumably, nixes all the random, wild theatrics), so it's bound to be emotionally affecting.

*In fact, our pals at Vulture do say this exact thing.