LOS ANGELES — No one goes to Cannes expecting to be frightened by a film about a long-dead British writer. Unless, of course, that writer is George Orwell.

When Raoul Peck’s documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5” premiered at the festival in May, the crowd reacted with the startled tension of a horror screening — gasps, murmurs, a few cries — before finally breaking into thunderous applause.

What they saw on screen felt both familiar and terrifyingly current. Peck builds the film entirely from Orwell’s words, delivered in a low, steady burn by actor Damian Lewis (“Billions”), repositioning the dying author of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in his final tubercular days on the Scottish Isle of Jura, into today’s world. His vision of power, propaganda and language as a weapon meets a barrage of torn-from-the-

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