George Orwell is so iconic that he has his own adjective, but his classic dystopian novel almost didn’t make it to completion.

“He’s trying to finish ‘1984,’ it’s the last year of his life, and he’s in and out of hospitals, sanatoriums. He doesn’t know if he will finish,” says filmmaker Raoul Peck.

That’s the struggle that anchors Peck’s latest documentary, “Orwell: 2+2=5,” as the British writer races against tuberculosis to publish his chilling vision of doublethink, thoughtcrimes and memory holes before his death at age 46.

For Peck, that’s only half the story. Scenes from Orwell’s life blend together with grim footage of our own time, from the battlefields of Ukraine to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The mistake during the Cold War that people made is [thinking] he wrote exclusi

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