In 1990, a black and white passport photo captured a young Christopher Nolan, then a 20 years old aspiring filmmaker working as a cameraman. The image showcases Nolan’s early days before his rise to fame with films like Memento and Oppenheimer, hinting at his potential as a visionary director.
At the time, Nolan was a student at University College London (UCL), studying English literature while secretly honing his filmmaking skills using the university’s 16 mm film equipment. He collaborated with friends like Roko Belic on student shorts and began experimenting with narrative structure early on.
Prior to 1990, Nolan had already co-directed short films such as Tarantella (1989). He continued developing personal projects like Larceny (1996) and Doodlebug (1997), refining his skills as writer, editor, director, and cinematographer.
Even back then, Nolan loved film cameras, and didn’t want to shoot on digital. But film is expensive, so he had the actors endlessly rehearse their scenes so he could then film it in one take. Nolan used practical light sources in almost every scene because he didn’t have a lighting crew. Scenes are lit by the sun or whatever lamps were in whatever room he was filming in. Just about all the actors were personal acquaintances. For many of them, Following (1998) was their film debut. The policeman interrogating the main character is Christopher Nolan’s uncle.
Christopher Nolan has become the only director to have 8 out of 12 films make the IMDb Top 250 list. The films that made the list are The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Oppenheimer (2023), The Prestige (2006), Memento (2000), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Batman Begins (2005). The only ones missing are: Following (1998), Insomnia (2002), Dunkirk (2017) and Tenet (2020).
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