ORWELL: 2+2=5
Narrated by Damian Lewis, Raoul Peck’s film delves deep into George Orwell’s final months as he struggled to complete his dystopian masterpiece 1984. This documentary explores the prescience of Orwell’s novel, and reflects how Doublethink, Thoughtcrime, and Big Brother echo across the years.
POST FILM DISCUSSION
Chair: Stephen Sackur presented BBC's interview show HARDtalk for eighteen years, having been a foreign correspondent based in Cairo, Jerusalem, Washington and Brussels.
Andrew O'Hagan is a novelist, essayist and non-fiction writer. He has been nominated for the Booker Prize and won the E. M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He gave the George Orwell Memorial Lecture in 2008.
Nathan Waddell is a Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature at the University of Birmingham. His most recent book is A Bright Cold Day: The Wonder of George Orwell.
"Orwell: 2+2=5 is an artful balancing act, one that dips in and out of Orwell’s life and work, but also uses a broad array of reference points as it swings from history to art to the most current of events." - Steve Pond, TheWrap
"Peck, who profiled another writer of blistering moral clarity and prescience, James Baldwin, in I Am Not Your Negro, brings a healthy dose of sympathetic rage to his exploration of Orwell’s worldview, and sensitivity to his life story." - Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter