Raoul Peck’s Filmmaking Equation

Raoul Peck is no stranger to bringing the lives and work of great writers, artists, thinkers and revolutionaries to the screen. Through both fiction and documentary, he has told the stories of figures ranging from Patrice Lumumba and Karl Marx to Ernest Cole and James Baldwin. At this May’s Cannes Film Festival, Peck premiered his latest documentary, “Orwell: 2+2=5,” about legendary English writer George Orwell. The film focuses on the final years of his life, when he was working tirelessly on the Scottish island of Jura to finish what would become the classic dystopian novel “1984.”

Narrated by actor Damian Lewis, who reads from various Orwell texts, including “1984” and “Animal Farm,” as well as his diaries and the essay “Why I Write,” the film builds a full portrait of the writer’s life and political thinking. A staunch anti-totalitarian, Orwell railed against authority of all kinds, whether from fascists on the right — he went to fight with the left in the Spanish Civil War — or communist apparatchiks under Stalin. Through a combination of clips from adaptations of Orwell’s work and contemporary footage from violent conflicts and authoritarian regimes around the world, Peck situates Orwell’s writing in the present day. From scenes of devastation in Ukraine and Gaza to clips of Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrection, the urgency and relevance of Orwell’s analysis is abundantly clear, even decades after his death.

Speaking at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where Peck’s film had its North American premiere, the filmmaker shared how the process of making the film changed his own mind about Orwell, revealing why he was so important to 20th century political thought and beyond. This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Truthdig: How did you first come to Orwell?

Raoul Peck: Well, besides my normal education, being read “Animal Farm” and “1984,” we were offered to have access to all of Orwell’s body of work, through Universal [Pictures], who approached us. And of course, you can’t say no to Orwell. From there, I started to find what would be my approach, because you have to find the right angle. And when you have total access, you’d better find something relevant. You need to go to the heart of the matter. In fact, very, very rapidly, I had a feel for where I should go and how to make Orwell mine. Orwell, other than my formal education, was not the first on my list. I thought he came from another angle and reality. But in fact, I discovered, very rapidly, the connection. He was born in India, he went back to South Asia, to Burma, as a military man when he was 19, the experience he had there, and the fact that he was always active in his life. You know, as a young writer, to go to the civil war in Spain, a lot of the most progressive intellectuals, for them, it was really a life-and-death situation where they felt that it was not enough to write about it. It was important to be there. These are all elements that brought him closer to me. I could see how relevant he is today. I always reject the aspect of, you know, “dystopia” and “a prophet,” that he had seen the future. No. That I would never be interested in. A prophet is just a prophet, but the strength of his analysis, this is what interests me. And the fact that that analysis is still functioning today and still very powerful to analyze the world, which is the same world, by the way. It’s not far back, and you see exactly what is happening. You can see, bit by bit, the decisions that are taken, the consequences of that, and how we as citizens react or not. It’s all Orwell.

Did your understanding of him change? Because speaking personally, I was a kid, and we read “Animal Farm” at some point, and “1984,” and I understood them to some degree, but it was very boxed away. I wasn’t aware of his essays.

It changed in the fact that I was myself carrying some prejudice from some of his contemporaries, friends or people from the Labour Party in Britain, who, even today, hate him, see him as a traitor. Because he criticized them at some point. For him, to belong to a party, it doesn’t mean you’re in a religion, that you have to say yes to everybody and everything. For some people, in the heat of the Cold War, the choice was, you are either with us or not with us, on both sides. Orwell was a free thinker. If you’re right, you’re right, but if you’re wrong, I will tell you you’re wrong, whoever you are, even in my own camp. That was not very tolerated at the time. In my memory, I never tried to understand what they were criticizing him for. I finally discovered that the fundamental problem is that he was a free thinker. Institutions don’t like that, whichever they are.

Going back to my childhood, especially in the post-End of History period, you read “Animal Farm,” and it’s a very direct criticism of the Soviet Union for being totalitarian, which Orwell hated universally. But it was taught as an anti-leftist, anti-socialist book.

Right, and the Soviet Union was, for him, the very present reality. If there was something else, he would have used it. It was just a reality he was living.

But it was also close to him, because he believed in its theoretical value. He was a socialist.

He has a very clear class analysis. And he lived that himself. He was not lower class, but he was not upper class. And he suffered from that. He suffered from it in school. He refused to go after Eton. He refused to go to Cambridge. But they pigeonholed him in this Cold War situation, and they didn’t see the universality of his analysis. It was about authoritarian regimes, whoever, wherever they are, including today. We are in the middle of it already.

Were you looking to reframe that public misunderstanding of Orwell?

My way of working is different. I first have to find my story in a dramatic way. I write screenplay, so I know the story structure. I’ve never done the biography. I’m not interested in doing a biography. I’m not doing a book. I have to find my anchor point. What is going on in his life at what moment that gives me a dramatization of that very moment of his life? Finally, I focused in on his last years, in Jura, where he rented a farm to be able to finish writing “1984,” and he was going to die by the end of the year. It’s a perfect moment of drama in the life of Orwell, where he’s in and out of a sanatorium, struggling to finish a novel, and struggling with what’s happening beyond that, in the world.

Well, he was witnessing the worst of it in the mid-’40s.

Yes! That’s a perfect, dramatic moment to tell a story. I’m dealing with a character. I’m not dealing with a writer in a biographical sense. It’s a man in a moment of his life where he has to make a decision, where he has to finish a novel. He didn’t even know what he was going to name that novel. So I bring you into that process, and then it gives me the freedom to revisit everything else. To revisit “1984,” “Animal Farm,” the essays. The basic backbone of that was the essay “Why I Write,” which is amazing. I’ve rarely seen a writer writing that sincerely, about his skills, about the reason he’s writing, about the reason other people write. That was an incredible red line for me to follow.

I was curious about your use of clips from multiple different film adaptations of both “1984” and “Animal Farm,” each with their own interpretations of the work.

You have to be somehow embedded in the person’s work, so you have many layers. You also have the layers of what other people have done with his work, how his work was used. With “1984,” it was incredible to discover that there are different versions that are different depending on the time. There are different endings. There are even different endings to the same film. The ending in Germany was not necessarily the same ending in Britain, or in the U.S., because the studios basically would change them. It’s part of the history of film, as well. For me, the choice of a certain clip says something about the time.

The use of present-day clips and news footage helps give us a closer feeling of connection to Orwell and his time. But it can also challenge the audience. For example, you use clips from “1984” where the main character ultimately succumbs to his situation, to Big Brother. And then you include clips of Edward Snowden, who did this amazing thing to stand up against totalitarianism, but now has ended up stuck in Russia and is not able to speak freely.

Well, he speaks freely. We have access.

Sort of, but if he were to get too anti-Putin, for example, I don’t know if he would be able to stay.

But there’s no use. Why would he be anti-Putin? He is living in the guy’s country. It would not be intelligent.

No, sure, but this gets to the whole issue, right?

He sacrificed his life for the truth, and that you can’t take from him.

No, but this is what’s interesting, right? It mirrors the absurdity in “1984.”

Yes. By the way, Putin understands that very well. He’s using it as well.

It’s Big Brother, right?

Yeah. But I was going to say, Orwell is a character in the film. It’s like a fiction film. You have to feel the character, you have to give him a soul. You have to understand his feelings, his emotions, his contradictions. Otherwise, it’s going to be a very cold film, a very intellectual film. And it’s not, because you listen [to] this guy writing about his wife, writing about the death of his wife, writing about his adopted son. This is emotion, and it’s on purpose. I need to be as close as possible to the real person. Not just the intellectual, but also the real person.

Well, it makes the ideas more clear, right? The fact that it’s moving.

It’s also easier for indulgence, to feel close. You know, if somebody is throwing a discourse at you, you can say, “I don’t believe it,” or, “You didn’t make an argument.” But if that person is sympathetic to you, if you accept that person as a person, not as a guru—

As a human being.

As a human being, yeah. It makes a difference. You’re willing to trust what he’s saying, and you’re willing to think about it. Feelings are not something negative. On the contrary, it opens possibilities in your head. And trust, you need that trust. My job is to allow you to enter the life of this person, and that you have empathy for this person, and then you can have a conversation with that person.

It occurs to me, while you’re saying this, that Orwell was doing a similar thing, right? Because he was writing fiction in order to better connect with people. Were you conscious of that while you were doing it, mirroring the film to his work?

On many levels. And that’s also something you can see if you watch the film multiple times. There are many things that I discovered while we were editing, like watching those clips from “1984,” about Winston doing those exercises. And then he is coughing at some point. And then we had a moment where he’s at the sanatorium. His writing finds itself directly in his own character. You know the relation with women, with the character Julia, when you read “1984” you say, “Wow, that’s rough.” It fits in the story, but at the same time, this is the way he was living his own marital life, in that Britain of the 20th century, where marriages were arranged. Not arranged like in other countries, like in India for example, but arranged.

Transactionally.

Transactionally, of course. So all those contradictions or layers, that plays a role in your acceptation of the film, of the argumentation. It’s not a doctoral thesis. It’s a film, with all the emotions, with all the contradictions. My job is to give you those contradictions. It’s to play with you as well, to challenge you. Sometimes you might not understand it right away, but then you make the connection 20 minutes later. And there is a connection. Sometimes you don’t know what it is, but then it stays in your head. I’m not there to make you consume something, where you watch the film, and you say, “Now I know.” No, I want you to go out and have plenty of questions. My whole fight is against consumerism. We have all become consumers. You have young people saying, “Oh, I’m a revolutionary,” and he’s lying in his car with a hamburger. No, no. You have to go out in the field. You have to go outside, find allies, make a barricade. Do something. But don’t tweet. That’s ridiculous. You don’t change your world by tweeting.

Hopefully some of us will be Orwell.

Don’t tweet!

Tweeting is OK sometimes. A little bit, just a little bit.

[Laughing] You guys are becoming comfortable!

It’s how it is, unfortunately, but that’s what your film is for.

Yeah, don’t let the technology overwhelm you. The technology has to be at your service. People are dispersed everywhere. We have the technology to have 100,000 people on the same square at a certain time, yeah, but we don’t use it.