Perhaps I don't understand iCloud

Can someone enlighten me? Maybe I just don't get it. I've been digitizing my DVD collection, and have maybe 200GB of movies now. I divide my time between the Northeast and Florida, and instead of carrying a hard drive with me, I thought I'd upload to iCloud, so I could access my stuff on my laptop or phone wherever I am, and on my main Mac when I'm in FL. I originally expanded my Dropbox account to 1 TB, but then figured I'd use iCloud instead - since it was the same cost for 2 TB.

So, I made a folder called Movies on my laptop desktop, connected my hard drive, and began to copy files to the Movies folder. I figured it would just upload those files to iCloud, then, when I wanted to access a title, I'd double click on it, the title would download from the cloud, and I'd watch it with VLC or whatever.

However, after adding just 22GB of movies to my desktop Movies folder, I'm getting a dialogue box saying I can't copy anymore because I'm out of space; on the bottom of the dialogue box, it reads "2.07 TB available in iCloud".

Is there a way I can nudge iCloud to upload those files and remove them from my laptop to free up space? That way, I can add more movies, and access them from multiple devices in multiple locations. My past experience with iCloud has been that the files get uploaded to the cloud, then they're tagged with a little cloud icon with an arrow in it. When I want to access that file, I double-click, the file downloads, and I can watch it.

What am I doing wrong? How can I get those movies to upload so I can add more?

Or is this the wrong thing to do. It works fine in Dropbox.

Thanks in advance,

J.