CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

Shot in black and white on almost no money, in natural light, Christopher Nolan’s debut is still a legend of nineties independent cinema. Everything he would go on to make is already there, from the labyrinthine plot to the obsession with control and the sense that nobody’s identity is quite solid. — A young writer starts following strangers through the streets of London, telling himself they’re material for his observations. The habit begins innocently enough, but it turns into a dangerous ritual once he meets Cobb, a charismatic burglar who shows him a world of manipulation, where personality is a performance and right and wrong come loose. — Tiger Award | Rotterdam International Film Festival | 1998 Best First Feature | San Francisco International Film Festival | 1998

Christopher Nolan’s famous revenge puzzle, nominated for two Oscars for its original screenplay and editing, follows a man (Guy Pearce) who wants to avenge his wife but can’t remember anything new. The colour scenes run backwards, the black-and-white ones forwards, and we follow him all the way. — Leonard Shelby can’t form new memories, so everything that happens to him slips away almost at once. He hunts his wife’s killer with Polaroids, notes and tattoos on his own body. Teddy and a barmaid, Natalie, both offer to help, but Leonard can’t remember whether he can trust them. — Nomination for Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 2002 Nomination for Best Film Editing | Oscars | 2002 Nomination for Best Screenplay | Golden Globes | 2002 Official Selection - Cinema of the Present | Venice Film Festival | 2000 Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award | Sundance Film Festival | 2001

Christopher Nolan made this American take on a classic Scandinavian thriller long before “Oppenheimer”, moving it from Norway to Alaska and handing Stellan Skarsgård’s part to Al Pacino. He kept the day that never ends, and the less his detective sleeps, the more paranoid he gets. — A Los Angeles detective comes to Nightmute, Alaska, to help the local police with the brutal murder of a teenage girl, but a manhunt in thick fog leaves everything badly tangled. Up here the sun never sets, and the longer he goes without sleep, the harder it is to hold himself together while he’s awake.