Nolan Begins

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 masterfully turns the relentless light into a mechanism of psychological erosion, mapping with his trademark directorial precision the slow unraveling of a man who can no longer distinguish between what is right and what is necessary. — A veteran detective arrives in a small Alaskan town to investigate the murder of a young girl. As the endless daylight of the polar summer robs him of sleep, a fatal mistake draws him into a vicious cycle of guilt, cover-ups, and psychological disintegration.