– Orwell: 2+2=5 –
Orwell: 2+2=5 is an upcoming comprehensive documentary film directed and produced by Raoul Peck. It explores the life and career of George Orwell, particularly the novel 1984. According to Deadline, Orwell’s private writings will be voiced by Damian in the documentary.
This isn’t the first time Damian has lent his voice to the likes of Orwell. Back in November 2017 a monument of Orwell was erected outside the BBC Broadcasting House in London as part of the Talking Statues project. Read about Damian voicing Orwell’s talking statue here.
The Orwell documentary will have its world premiere in the Cannes Premiere section at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, May 17, 2025.
The time is ripe to re-examine a writer who, though he died 75 years ago, foresaw how leaders of today would gaslight their own people to impose their will and squash dissent.
“A man that died in January 1950, to be that accurate about what is happening today — you better take a second look and try to learn even more from him,” Peck tells Deadline. For his examination of Orwell and his thought, the director drew upon the writer’s personal archives.
“The estate allowed me to have access to everything — to published, unpublished [work], private letters, unpublished manuscripts. And that’s something, especially in today’s world where buying a chapter of a book costs you a fortune,” Peck says. “It was a gift to be able to have access to everything.”
Deadline writes, “The documentary traces Orwell’s effort to complete 1984 in the late 1940’s as tuberculosis took the last vestiges of his health. He was hospitalized regularly as he worked on the manuscript on the Scottish island of Jura in the Inner Hebrides. The film also dials back to experiences much earlier in Orwell’s life that formed his humanistic worldview. In private writings – voiced by actor Damian Lewis – Orwell describes growing up with the ideology common to a Briton of his background (he described himself as “lower upper-middle class”). He was educated at Eton but instead of following the common path of his classmates to Oxford or Cambridge, he joined the British Imperial Service, working as a colonial police officer in Burma (present-day Myanmar).”
Orwell: 2+2=5 will be in select US theaters October 3, 2025.
Source: Deadline