Raoul Peck’s documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 had its world premiere in the Cannes Premiere section on May 17, 2025, earning a nomination for the L’oeil d’or at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. Featuring Damian Lewis voicing George Orwell’s writings, Peck interweaves biographical elements—Orwell’s time in Burma and his final years on Jura—with stark contemporary imagery to underscore the author’s continuing relevance amid rising authoritarianism.
Produced in collaboration with the Orwell Estate and backed by Jigsaw Productions, Velvet Film and Participant, the film blends archival footage, expert commentary and modern-day news clips to draw chilling parallels between Orwell’s dystopian vision and today’s global political landscape. Critics from Time and The Wrap have hailed its boldness, while industry observers point to its timely warning as central to the 2025 festival’s politically charged offerings.
At the Cannes Premiere on May 17, filmmaker Raoul Peck debuted Orwell: 2+2=5, a 119-minute documentary that reframes George Orwell’s life and work through the prism of today’s political turmoil, securing a L’Œil d’or nomination in the process.
Orwell: 2+2=5 screened alongside high-profile world premieres at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, where festival director Thierry Frémaux highlighted its urgent resonance amid a lineup dominated by films exploring geopolitics and social dissent. Audiences greeted Peck’s film with enthusiastic ovations, reflecting a broader festival mood concerned with authoritarian drift and the weaponization of language.
Peck, whose previous documentaries include I Am Not Your Negro (2016) and Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (2024), said crafting Orwell: 2+2=5 demanded a balance of historical fidelity and cinematic invention. In collaboration with the Orwell Estate, he strove to “honor the author’s intent” by pairing Damien Lewis’s narration with modern news footage—from the rubble of Basra to images from Gaza—and archival excerpts of Orwell’s essays and film adaptations. Peck explained that Orwell’s own skepticism—shaped by his years in Burma and his retreat to Jura—is the film’s emotional core, offering a lens through which to examine current threats to free expression.
Announced in March 2023, the project brought together Raoul Peck’s Velvet Film, Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, Anonymous Content, Closer Media and Participant, with Neon handling U.S. distribution. Shooting spanned archival research in London and on-location recreations in France, guided by editor Alexandra Strauss and composer Alexeï Aïgui’s score, designed to echo Orwell’s own prose rhythms.
Film critics praised the documentary’s layered structure. Time called it “the boldest documentary anyone could make right now,” noting how its concatenation of Orwell’s warnings and contemporary imagery renders fiction indistinguishable from fact. The Wrap lauded Peck’s “dynamic” fusion of biography and political analysis, arguing that the film’s most potent message is its insistence on vigilance in the face of propaganda. Screen Daily observed that Peck’s ability to “map modern propaganda back to its Orwellian roots” makes the work both timely and essential.
As global elections, digital surveillance debates and disinformation campaigns intensify, Orwell: 2+2=5 arrives as a stark reminder of language’s power to shape reality. Scholars point to the film as a case study in documentary activism, while political commentators warn that Orwell’s aphorisms—“War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery”—remain prophetic in our era of “post-truth” governance .
