Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5

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Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5

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1h 59m

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56 Reviews

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From Academy Award®-nominated and BAFTA-winning director, Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro), Orwell is the definitive feature-length documentary on visionary author George Orwell, with the exclusive cooperation of the Orwell Estate. ‍"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past...," wrote Orwell in his novel, 1984. Today, the "newspeak" of authoritarian rule is alive and well and in unexpected places, from the rise of AI Chatbot to the Russian propaganda machine, from the marketing webs of commercial metaverses to the political banning of books in the Southern United States. Peck's "Orwell" will use George Orwell's life, work and legacy as a maverick iconoclastic writer to jam the signals of the algorithms gone rogue which, in the name of personal freedom, threaten to close our minds to a greater possibility.

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Critics Consensus

Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 is a dense, urgent, and unapologetically blunt documentary that offers a chillingly relevant examination of totalitarianism's enduring appeal and the societal conditions that enable it.

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Sarah-Tai Black

Globe and Mail

Despite its unevenness at times, Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 is a sprawling work that offers itself as a frightening historical record. Indeed, it is perhaps the most soberingly didactic of Peck’s works.

Oct 8, 2025

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Owen Gleiberman

Variety

“2+2 = 5” is didactic in a way that Orwell, I suspect, would have looked a bit askance at... Yet the film’s timeliness is still a tonic.

Oct 3, 2025

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Bob Mondello

NPR

The filmmaker isn't subtle, but then, neither was his subject, and the film's points could hardly seem more prescient than they do in this moment.

Oct 3, 2025

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Charles Mudede

The Stranger (Seattle, WA)

A humanizing portrait of a mythologically large 20th-century social commentator.

Oct 22, 2025

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Alan Zilberman

Washington City Paper

It does not take a Ph.D. in literature to recognize how public life is increasingly Orwellian, so the fundamental error in the new documentary Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 is how it mistakes surface-level pattern recognition with insight.

Oct 17, 2025

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Stephen Silver

The SS Ben Hecht

The film’s overbaked thesis is 'Orwell was right, and my proof of that is... every single thing going on in the world currently.'

Oct 16, 2025

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Gregg Y

Informative and visually captivating

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

10/18/25

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RG

Very intense and very thoughtful. Agreed with much of it, but its so overtly one-sided that detracts a bit from its credibility. Lots of horrors that humans inflict upon one another shown, but no reference to 9/11 or the October 7, 2023 assault by Hamas.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

10/13/25

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David S

Jumbled, overwrought, and too blunt.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

10/16/25

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Bill W

Convoluted, obtuse, and over-designed, the film is a mashup of flashy graphics and haphazard film clips that detract from the narrative (if you call it that) and sabotage any storytelling. It was if the filmmaker was an amateur graphic artist who spent all his time playing with animated fonts and incendiary still photos (watch out, there's a lot of violence and blood) while ignoring the story/time/logic line. The movie is mostly clips from the multiple 1984 and Animal Farm films made over the years with a few Trump clips thrown in for easy shock value. When a clip of a Tom Cruise sci-fi movie showed up near the end, I gave up.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

10/14/25

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Shaun A

Like Festivus airing of grievances but the cast was forced to use Orwell's words and PowerPoint with gifs. But not as funny, smart or insightful.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

10/11/25

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Emily C

Quite disappointing. The film celebrates diverse and original thinking, but presented no new or novel idea. Why does it seem to be impossible for a social commentary to criticize both sides of the political spectrum in the US? This would have been far more interesting if it could have broken out of its own bias and not only criticized the US political “right” but the “left” as well, breaking out of the old and boring and unoriginal polarized perspective.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

10/11/25

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Raoul Peck

Director

Damian Lewis

Narrator

Raoul Peck

Writer

Alex Gibney

Producer

Blair Foster

Producer

Tamara Rosenberg

Producer

Orwell: 2+2=5: Trailer 1

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Synopsis

From Academy Award®-nominated and BAFTA-winning director, Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro), Orwell is the definitive feature-length documentary on visionary author George Orwell, with the exclusive cooperation of the Orwell Estate. ‍"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past...," wrote Orwell in his novel, 1984. Today, the "newspeak" of authoritarian rule is alive and well and in unexpected places, from the rise of AI Chatbot to the Russian propaganda machine, from the marketing webs of commercial metaverses to the political banning of books in the Southern United States. Peck's "Orwell" will use George Orwell's life, work and legacy as a maverick iconoclastic writer to jam the signals of the algorithms gone rogue which, in the name of personal freedom, threaten to close our minds to a greater possibility.

Director: Raoul Peck
Producer: Alex Gibney, Blair Foster, Tamara Rosenberg, Nick Shumaker, George Chignell, Raoul Peck
Screenwriter: Raoul Peck
Distributor: NEON
Production Co: Closer Media, Anonymous Content, Jigsaw Productions
Genre: Documentary, Biography, History
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Oct 3, 2025, Limited
Box Office (Gross USA): $259.9K
Runtime: 1h 59m

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