"Some of the most urgent films at this year's Toronto International Film Festival aren't here to soothe. Together, Orwell: 2+2=5, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, and Frankenstein play like sizzle reels of caution, and at their best, they're award-worthy symbols of alarm. These films, the first two of which are documentaries, don't just entertain-they confront fractured humanity, closeness and distance under Israel's siege of Gaza, and a creation we've set loose, growing beyond our control."
"The film portrays a slow-creep march around authoritarianism, not from an academic distance, but as an unsettling, visceral lesson in the here and now. Picture British actor Damian Lewis reading George Orwell's final musings-his letters, essays, diaries-with an almost clinical cadence. These reflections are layered over raw, jarring images: Gaza in ruins, Donald Trump's distorted truths, and the online mechanics of misinformation that enable our tendencies to ignore the unimaginable."
"Hitler wrote a book, Mein Kampf. He said exactly what he was going to do, and he did exactly what was written there. And yet the whole German society, the whole European society, did not believe him-they felt he was a joke." "They thought, well, we will control him. They thought, well, our modern world cannot go that far down. We cannot imagine genocide going on. But it was written,"
Several urgent films at the Toronto International Film Festival refuse to soothe and instead act as alarms about contemporary dangers. Raoul Peck's Orwell: 2+2=5 frames George Orwell's final writings, voiced by Damian Lewis, over images of Gaza, Donald Trump, and online misinformation to portray the slow creep of authoritarianism and societal capacity to forget and repress. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk document closeness and distance under Israel's siege of Gaza. Frankenstein examines a creation that has grown beyond human control. The films privilege interrogation over facilitation, using cinematic language to confront fractured humanity and warning signs.
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