We like to put the theater in Political Theater every so often.
George Orwell, Ukrainian artists, the Christmas Adventurers Club. Movies don’t have to be overtly political to say something about politics.
Sometimes just documenting what life is like can become inherently political. What the best films do — be they documentaries, comedies, thrillers or musicals — is capture a dream unfolding, in sight and sound, and capture your attention.
Here are the conversations about movies and with whom we had them on Political Theater in 2025.
Filmmaker Raoul Peck, about his documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5”
An Orwell movie for Orwellian times
Co-director Slava Leontyev, a Ukrainian artist and soldier, on his documentary “Porcelain War”
‘Beauty never gets old’ — Slava Leontyev in the ‘Porcelain War’
Sky Sitney, co-founder of DC/DOX, about the state of documentary film
The ‘predicament and necessity’ of documentary movies
Sean Carswell, a professor at Cal State Channel Islands, on Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vineland” and the film “One Battle After Another”
Taking the ‘Vineland’ express to ‘One Battle After Another’
CQ Roll Call staff writer Chris Johnson, about the politics of immigration, his beat, in “One Battle After Another”