Orwell: 2+2=5

In 1946, George Orwell retreated to the remote Scottish island of Jura, terminally ill and racing to finish the novel that would define him — and perhaps us. That novel was 1984, a towering work of dystopian fiction whose words and phrases echo through the halls of AI labs, surveillance states, and algorithmic governance.

In Orwell: 2+2=5, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) surveys the writer’s final years to understand how a man shaped by poverty, imperialism, and war authored a warning we’ve yet to heed. Peck’s film is neither hagiography nor a traditional biography: Through a powerful assemblage of archival footage, contemporary media, and literary narration (voiced by Damian Lewis), Orwell’s work resonates as prescient commentary on our own paradoxical present. Drawing from Orwell’s full body of work — from Burmese Days to Down and Out in Paris and London — Peck shows how language becomes ideology, fiction becomes prophecy, and a dying writer’s final manuscript might be the most urgent mirror of our time.

A sprawling work that offers itself as a frightening historical record. Indeed, it is perhaps the most soberingly didactic of Peck’s works.

Sarah Tai-Black, Globe and Mail

Peck presents the life and work of Orwell, while also showcasing just how prophetic Orwell’s writing was to our current situation and the way of the world. In doing this, Peck creates one of the most urgent and terrifying films of the year.

Ross Bonaime, Collider

Densely packed, the movie is a whirlwind of ideas and images, by turns heady, enlivening, disturbing and near-exhausting. It’s a work of visceral urgency from Peck, who’s best known for his 2017 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, about James Baldwin.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times