Altitude has released the UK trailer for ‘Orwell: 2+2=5,’ Raoul Peck’s bold and urgently timely documentary that reframes George Orwell not as a monument of the past, but as a warning signal still flashing red. The film will be released in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on 27 March.
From the Oscar-nominated director of ‘I Am Not Your Negro,’ Peck turns his lens on one of the most radical and visionary writers of the 20th century. Orwell’s novels of the 1940s, including 1984 and Animal Farm, imagined an authoritarian future once dismissed as dystopian fantasy. Today, their ideas feel alarmingly familiar.
Working in close collaboration with the Orwell Estate, ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ weaves together a rich collage of historical archive, readings from Orwell’s personal diaries, cinematic references and striking modern-day footage. The result is not only a definitive portrait of the writer himself, but a provocative new interpretation of just how prophetic his work has become in an era shaped by disinformation, surveillance and the manipulation of truth.
Award-winning actor Damian Lewis lends his voice to Orwell, anchoring the film with a calm yet piercing presence. Through Orwell’s words and Peck’s cinematic vision, the documentary becomes a stirring meditation on the dangers of unchecked power and the fragility of so-called civilised society. It is told through the eyes of a man from the past who may still hold the key to understanding our present, and perhaps our future.
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