You come away from The Scottsboro Boys sure of two things: that the next cakewalk you hear will induce queasiness and that the show's director/choreographer Susan Stroman is some kind of genius. This kick-ass West End premiere, now happily transferred from the Young Vic, has a simplicity, a precision, a visceral energy, a choreographic razzle-dazzle that make an art of catching you off-guard. The story of the Scottsboro nine shamefully symbolises the sickness that once resided (and maybe still does) deep in the heart of American society.

Bigger is better in the Tricycle’s latest piece of reclaimed black history. African-American writer Marcus Gardley’s stimulating play, which transports Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba to 1836 New Orleans and a significant shift in the evolving racial hierarchy, begins slowly and timidly, reliant on exposition and sitcom laughs. Yet once he and Indhu Rubasingham embrace its operatic qualities, this memorably evocative work takes flight.

Opening on the day after the Scottish Referendum, Chris Thompson’s new play has a timely, even incendiary, title. It also recalls the sad little song ‘Albion’ by Pete Doherty and Babyshambles. This time, however, The Albion is the name of an East End pub which is the home of the English Protection Army, a far-right outfit that is both stupid and more than a touch sinister. If these groups weren’t currently on the rise, cashing in on public disquiet about militant Islamism, it would be much easier to dismiss their Neanderthal posturing.

We call it the First World War, but in Western Europe at least, most of the scrutiny is confined to what happened to Britain, France and Germany (with a side order of Russia) from 1914-18. The writer and presenter of this two-part series, David Olusoga, seized the opportunity to emphasise the full global scope of the conflict by throwing fascinating light on the contributions made by troops from the French and British colonies, uncomprehendingly transported from India and Africa to the mud, blood and horror of the Western Front.

Sadly the battle to shape stories from a female perspective, or even to tell stories about women is far from over. The Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University recently found that women represented only 15 percent of protagonists in the 100 top-grossing films of 2013. If we look closer to home the most recent BFI statistics put the percentage of female directors working in the UK at just 8 percent (that's based on films released in the UK in 2012) - meaning this is even rarer than you'd think.

We see the harshness of everyday life in Danis Tanović’s An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker first in its snowy, subsistence landscapes, as hero Nazif goes out to the forest to bring in whatever wood he can find to keep the family home warm. But by the end of the film, which took the Jury Grand Prix at last year’s Berlinale, we have seen, much more chillingly, the harshness of human behaviour.

Once in his stride as a director, Samuel Fuller never shied away from the controversial. The mental-hospital set Shock Corridor, from 1963, prefigured One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and touched on the arms race, incest, racism and the Korean War. A year later, his Naked Kiss sympathetically portrayed a prostitute. The final film he made in America, 1982’s White Dog, also pulled no punches and met the nature of racism head on. In some quarters of the press it was trailed as itself being racist. It was not released in America.

The full title of Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, first produced in Chicago in 2012,  is deliberately gauche and in need of editing. No review is complete without it, however, so here it is: We Are Proud To Present A Presentation About The Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known As Southwest Africa, From The German Sudwestafrika, Between The Years 1884 - 1915. As they enter through the rehearsal room at the Bush, the audience encounters the group of well-intentioned young people supposedly keen to tell us the tragic story of the first genocide of the 20th century.

Anyone familiar with Mark Kermode’s reviewing will already have heard his adulation of Steve McQueen’s latest film, 12 Years a Slave. An edition of The Culture Show dedicated to McQueen’s career could, then, have gone a bit weak at the knees in veneration. Instead, it roamed freely, making many intelligent connections across McQueen’s restless artistic journey from Turner Prize-winning video artist to hotly tipped Oscar shoo-in.

Some films quite rightly have awards glory etched into their DNA, and when the admirably uncompromising Steve McQueen announced that his next project, focussing on the subject of slavery, would feature that cast, only a fool would have bet against it collecting armfuls of prizes. Moreover, the brutality and societal impact of slavery has seldom been seen on screen; thus in the words of its director, 12 Years a Slave fills "a hole in the canvass of cinema".

Based on the memoir by Solomon Northup (as told to David Wilson) and adapted for the screen by John Ridley, 12 Years a Slave sees an affluent black American – a violinist and family man born free in New York state - pitched into a waking nightmare when he's kidnapped by slavers in 1841. After a night of indulgence during which he's seemingly courted by admirers of his musicianship, Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) awakens screaming in bondage before he's shipped to the south, as mere cargo, and sold to the first of several masters.

Most memorably and extensively, the film documents Solomon's suffering at the hands of Edwin Epps, a drunken brute played with extraordinary ferocity by Michael Fassbender. Epps is a vile but utterly credible beast: a man riddled with self-hate whose explosive lust for the enslaved Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o, pictured above right) leads to him sideline his wife (Sarah Paulson). Patsey is the reluctant object of his affection and, as a result of the conflict this stirs up in him, she's also the victim of his worst cruelty.

The London-born McQueen (a former Turner Prize winning artist) has an exemplary directorial track record, having brought his talent strikingly to bear on the story of IRA martyr Bobby Sands in Hunger and on the subject of sex addiction in Shame - both of which were huge critical smashes and both of which starred Fassbender (McQueen and his muse Fassbender are pictured together below left). Whereas previously his films have been defiantly, dynamically art-house - sometimes so quietly contemplative they border on the spare - 12 Years a Slave is passionate and direct: there's no room for ambiguity here. And yet there's commonality: a marriage of sensitivity to character with fearlessness regarding controversial content; and, all three of McQueen's films have dealt in incarceration of a kind - the inhabitants of the Maze in Hunger, a man imprisoned by his own addiction in Shame and now a man caught in the shackles of slavery.

12 Years a Slave is a true horror story which rages at the obvious injustice of slavery and the horrendous hardships suffered by slaves themselves but, perhaps most remarkably, through Epps and those like him, McQueen draws out the complex reactions of white plantation owners and workers. It shows the detrimental impact of slavery on all those it touches, not just the people it subjugates. It illustrates how society at large is poisoned, how those who keep slaves are rendered crueller and lesser, tortured by both their own capacity for sadism and their inescapable humanity, and how few had the courage to challenge the miserable status quo.

As Epps, Fassbender does the near-impossible by making a man of such brutality not sympathetic exactly but certainly painfully human, laying bare his internal torture. He's an actor who seems to give himself over entirely to his roles and while Ejiofor is remarkable, holding us close on his horrifying journey, what Fassbender does with his character is nothing short of miraculous. And while 12 Years a Slave provides ample meat for its established actors (Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti and Brad Pitt feature memorably), it also helps shape a star in Nyong'o (making her film debut) who is heart-wrenchingly real as the terrorised Patsey.

12 Years a Slave isn't just expertly executed; its source material was shrewdly selected (by McQueen's partner, the cultural critic Bianca Stigter). By choosing to focus on a true story, what unfolds is rendered all the more powerful. Furthermore, Solomon's previous status as a free man, seemingly oblivious to life's worst cruelties, will make it easier for modern, affluent audiences to project themselves onto his character. That's not to play down the film's less commercial achievements, as this could hardly be described as slavery-lite. 12 Years a Slave is a film of searing sincerity and insight, whose central characters are drawn with real complexity. McQueen's third film doesn't just slide slavery under the microscope, it holds it there.

Overleaf: watch the trailer for 12 Years a Slave