‘Filmmaking is political’: Raoul Peck on ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’, Donald Trump, and the dangers of AI

Euronews · Feb 19, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of this world. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.” This ripped-from-the-headlines statement could have been written yesterday but it belongs to George Orwell, the world-renowned author of “Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four", who died 76 years ago. Time marches on, but certain things don’t change. In fact, they often get worse. The quote features in Orwell: 2+2=5, the new documentary by Raoul Peck, the celebrated filmmaker and former Minister of Culture for Haiti who has continually questioned and explored the legacies of colonialism and the mechanics of oppression through his uncompromising filmography. Following his Oscar nominated I Am Not Your Negro and his Peabody-winning HBO docuseries Exterminate All The Brutes, Peck takes the words of Orwell - read in voiceover by actor Damian Lewis - and connects the dots between the writer’s diary entries and present-day totalitarian regimes. In making Orwell’s words collide with scenes from history and the modern day, Peck not only shows us that the past can inform the present but also exposes how the playbook for totalitarianism – as practiced in Orwell’s final dystopian novel – has been used as a blueprint by governments all over the world over the past century. Haiti. Myanmar. Russia. Israel. The United States of America. Orwell: 2+2=5 highlights not only how history repeats itself but how present-day figures like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have all adopted "Nineteen Eighty-Four"'s strategy of “Newspeak”, showing that sentences like “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery”, “Ignorance is Strength” and “Two plus two equals five” don’t belong to the realms of dystopian fiction anymore. They resonate in our reality. Euronews Culture sat down with Raoul Peck to discuss his essential new documentary, how the words of Orwell echo in the age of “fake news” and deepfakes, and how objective truth is threatened when language is corrupted and technology goes unregulated. Euronews Culture: What was it that brought you on board for this project? Was it (documentarian and producer) Alex Gibney, or a more personal relationship with the writings of George Orwell? Raoul Peck: Well, it came as a big, huge gift from Universal, who approached Alex Gibney to inquire if he would be producing such a film on Orwell. Alex called me and I asked him if I would have the freedom to do the film I wanted. He assured me that that was the case, and of course, I said yes! Because that's not something you get every day - to have access to the totality of an author’s body of work. And Orwell being this recognized figure in the whole world... So much as to become an adjective... That's not an offer that you can refuse. I imagine that because you fled Haiti at a very young age to escape the Duvalier dictatorship, you were already all too familiar with the language of totalitarianism and its methods... Not only that, I grew up with what we call “Newspeak” (the fictional language of the totalitarian superstate in Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four") - the use of language in order to hide your real intention. That's an approach that you have in economy, in business, in all sorts of life. And indeed, coming from Haiti, you recognize very early on that words could have two meanings. Some governments talk about democracy and then support the dictatorship. I learned that very early on, with the Duvalier dictatorship and the support of the USA and part of European governments... On one side, they're talking about democracy. On the other side, they're making deals with governments or authoritarian regimes who are keeping their people down. I was aware of that contradiction very early on in my life. There's a quote that stood out for me in the film, when Orwell talks about "Animal Farm". He said that it was the first time that he fused his political intent with his artistic intent. Does that mirror your own approach to filmmaking? It does. When I started in cinema, you couldn't make any political ambition with art. Art was supposed to be something special, something pure. The same thing with entertainment. Everything became entertainment. Even news became entertainment. But I never believed that. It's not because it's entertainment that you can't put more weight in terms of content, and you will find a form to make it cinema. I always believed that filmmaking is political. I would say that I always had a political intention in making my films. I was glad that it was also Orwell’s intention from the start... He is heard in the film as saying: "The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude". What he basically says is that the attitude to say, ‘Well, I am neutral’ or ‘I don't take a position’ is actually a political position. There is no such thing as ‘I don’t have an opinion’ or ‘I can’t act on what is happening in the place I live’. No, you are a citizen, and democracy means that you are an informed and educated citizen that takes part in the affairs of your city or society. Democracy is not something that you can acquire once and for all. Especially in the western part of this planet, where, of course, you have been protected almost 50 years from immediate wars on your territory, with a few exceptions. But people got lazy, thinking that they have it and they don't have to do anything else to protect it. And now we see how rapidly the degradation of democracy can happen, even in the most important beacon of democracy that was the United States. Because it’s not anymore. I have always believed in the value of fighting for freedom of speech, the freedom to be able to vote. It's a luxury in most parts of the world. But here in Europe, we live as if it’s perfectly natural and that it will grow by itself and that we don't have to do anything to defend it. No, we have to work on it every day. The last time I spoke to you was 10 years ago for the release of I Am Not Your Negro. When watching Orwell: 2+2=5, I couldn't help but draw parallels between both films. You use the voice of deceased authors, both of whom were sincere and incredibly bold in their time, and make their voices reverberate in the present. You told me at the time that one of your aims with I Am Not Your Negro was to bring the voice of James Baldwin to a new generation that hadn't yet had the privilege of reading and hearing his words. But George Orwell is very different because he remains a household name – and as you say, has become an adjective. It’s gone as far as his words becoming overused in general discourse – whether it’s “collateral damage”, “alternative facts” or “Room 101”... These have been so overused and bandied about on the news and social media that they almost seem gutted of sense. That's the problem with Orwell at some point. The name is as known as Coca-Cola, and I'm not sure that everybody really understands what it means. Don't forget, he died very young. He was 46, so he was not there to do the spinning of his work. So after his death, it was basically used against fascism - mostly against Stalinism and communism. That was the order of the day, and they forgot that Orwell's work has a much more universal goal. What he wrote was against any kind of totalitarianism. He wrote that "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is embedded in Britain because he wanted to demonstrate that that kind of behaviour or historical development could happen in the English speaking countries and Europe. So, it's misunderstanding to reduce Orwell to a specific type of totalitarianism. This film is also an instrument to understand that, to show the value and the layers of Orwell's understanding about the whole world. Throughout the film, we hear Orwell’s words through his diary entries and his correspondence, all in the last years of his life as he’s finishing “Nineteen Eighty-Four". You keep things very personal. In my experience, it is immensely more intense and efficient to let the author himself tell this story than the use of experts or talking heads, which are basically people mostly interested in giving their own angles on something. There is nothing more powerful for me than to give the stage to the author himself. Hearing his voice also makes it very urgent, as well as haunting. One detail I enjoyed was the eeriness of both the beginning and the end, in which we see not only a photo of a baby Orwell with his Indian nanny, but also Koch’s bacillus... It's one of the many layers that you have to find to make the film also emotionally resonant. I don't think I would like to make a film that is essentially intellectual. It's about cinema. Cinema is about emotion. And it's one of the tools that I use - music, images, graphics - to make sure that you are not only in the presence of just thoughts, but also of emotion, of exchanges, of collective community. We see that aspect with your use of portraits in the film. Yes, the portraits are important for this film. That's the human part. They are almost like the witness of what what is happening in the world. And yes, the bacillus – it's when you realise that it’s much more than politics - it’s also life itself. And when you use the subject of “I can't breathe”, it’s the analogy for all people who actually can't breathe in their society because they are not accepted or they are not considered like normal human beings. I'm glad you mention music, because one of my favourite needle drops you’ve done was in I Am Not Your Negro, when you recontextualise Kendrick Lamar’s song ‘The Blacker The Berry’. Here, you use this eerie AI lullaby at the end. Why did you choose to end the film that way? I wanted to come out of the film with a kind of irony - an irony that Orwell himself had. He had a lot of humour and wasn’t dark. He had his fight and he tried to take a stand, but at the same time, he had that incredible British dry humour. And so I wanted to capture this through that music, which is total