Film screening and Q&A with director Raoul Peck
DCP | 2025 | Directed by Raoul Peck | USA | 119 minutes
Free admission. Registration encouraged but not required.
The definitive new documentary on the visionary author George Orwell comes to Yale October 1. Raoul Peck, acclaimed director of the Oscar-nominated documentary I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, collaborates with the George Orwell Estate to interweave historical clips, readings from Orwell’s diary, cinematic references, and frontline footage of modern-day crises. The result is not only a vivid portrait of the writer himself, but a fresh take on how remarkably relevant and prophetic Orwell’s work has become. Described by Slate’s Sam Adams as “dazzling and terrifying, a guide to a political movement that has been gathering steam for decades and shows no signs of letting up,” the film arrives at a moment of urgent resonance. As terms like “Big Brother” and “Newspeak” grow ever more prevalent and ominous with each passing day, ORWELL: 2+2=5 offers a stirring depiction of the dangers of unchecked power and the fragility of so-called civilized society, told through the eyes of a man from the past who may hold the key to the world’s future.
Post-screening conversation with director Raoul Peck, moderated by Professor Marlene Daut (Black Studies Department and Department of French)
Raoul Peck is a director, screenwriter, and producer. Born in Haiti, raised in Congo, the U.S., France, and Germany, Peck holds a master’s degree in economic engineering from the University of Berlin and studied film at the Academy of Cinema and Television in Berlin (DFFB). In 1989, Peck established Velvet Film, which now operates in the U.S., France, and Haiti, and through which he has produced or co-produced all his films. He also created the Foundation Forum Eldorado, which focuses on cultural development in Haiti; served as Haiti’s Minister of Culture from 1996 to 1997; taught screenwriting and directing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts; and was appointed Chairman of La Fémis in Paris in 2010. Peck is one of the most significant and prolific filmmakers of our time, richly rewarded for his historical, political, and artistic work, including such films as THE MAN BY THE SHORE (1993), LUMUMBA (2000), SOMETIMES IN APRIL (2005), THE YOUNG KARL MARX (2017), and ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND (2024). His 2016 documentary film I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards and won the Audience Award at both the Toronto and Berlin International Film Festivals, as well as Best Documentary from the LA Film Critics Association, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), the César Awards, and many others.
Marlene Daut teaches courses in anglophone and francophone Caribbean, African American, and French colonial literary and historical studies. Primarily a literary and intellectual historian of the Caribbean, she writes about the history of the Haitian Revolution, literary cultures of the greater Caribbean, and racial politics in global media. Her books include Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (2017); Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865 (2015); Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (2023); and The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (2025). She is also co-editor (with Grégory Pierrot and Marion Rohrleitner) of the volume, Haitian Revolutionary Fictions: An Anthology (2022).
Presented by Whitney Humanities Center | Part of the Neon Fall Advance Screenings Series