Orwell: 2+2=5

After I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, Raoul Peck returns with another urgently relevant documentary. As his health rapidly deteriorates, George Orwell retreats into isolation to work on what will become his final and most prophetic novel, 1984. Looking back on a life shaped by war, colonialism and ideological conflict, his reflections on power, propaganda and truth crystallise into a dystopia that still feels disturbingly close to our present.

In ORWELL: 2 + 2 = 5, Peck weaves together Orwell’s life and writings with images from the contemporary world. Archival material, excerpts from film adaptations of 1984 and present-day news footage flow seamlessly into one another. Guided by Damian Lewis’s restrained voice-over, the film takes the form of an essay rather than a conventional biography — a meditation on how authoritarian systems operate, then and now.

Raoul Peck is known for his engaged, political cinema, in which the past always resonates with the present. Just like his portrait of James Baldwin, he mostly lets Orwell speak for himself: through essays, letters and novels that haven’t lost any urgency. In collaboration with the Orwell Estate, Peck made a film that warns, confronts and asks the questions how well we have been listening.