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"Dunkirk"
Production Notes
When 400,000 men
couldn’t get home…
home came for them. |
Read more at in70mm.com The 70mm Newsletter
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Written by: Warner Brothers.
Images by: - |
Date:
10.07.2017 |
Mats
Kullander, and the 70mm print for Rigoletto, Stockholm, Sweden
From
filmmaker Christopher Nolan (“Interstellar,” “Inception,” “The Dark Knight”
Trilogy) comes the epic action thriller “Dunkirk.”
“Dunkirk” opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are
surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the
sea, they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in. The story unfolds on land, sea and air. RAF Spitfires engage the enemy in
the skies above the Channel, trying to protect the defenseless men below.
Meanwhile, hundreds of small boats manned by both military and civilians are
mounting a desperate rescue effort, risking their lives in a race against
time to save even a fraction of their army.
“Dunkirk” features a multigenerational ensemble cast, including Fionn
Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard,
James D’Arcy and Barry Keoghan, with Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark
Rylance and Tom Hardy.
Nolan directed “Dunkirk” from his own screenplay, utilizing a mixture of
IMAX® and 65mm film to bring the story to the screen. The film was produced
by Emma Thomas and Nolan, with Jake Myers serving as executive producer.
The behind-the-scenes creative team on “Dunkirk” included director of
photography Hoyte van Hoytema, production designer Nathan Crowley, editor
Lee Smith, costume designer Jeffrey Kurland, visual effects supervisor
Andrew Jackson and special effects supervisor Scott Fisher. The music was
composed by Hans Zimmer.
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a Syncopy Production, a film by Christopher
Nolan, “Dunkirk.” Opening in conventional theatres and IMAX, the film will
be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment
Company.
Dunkirkmovie.net |
More in 70mm reading:
“Dunkirk”: A personal first impression
"Dunkirk" in the splendour of 7OMM
Christopher Nolan to Direct the
Epic Action Thriller “Dunkirk” in 65mm for Warner Bros. Pictures
Nolan's "Dunkirk" will feature
over 100 minutes of IMAX material
Acclaimed filmmaker
Christopher Nolan directs an international cast in “Interstellar”
in70mm.com's IMAX Page
Chronological premiere
list of all real 70mm films
Now showing in 70mm in a
theatre near you!
Internet link:
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Variety
•
Deadline
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indiewire.com
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dunkirkmovie.com
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slashfilm.com
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slate.com
French release:
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July 17th 20:30, in the presence of Christopher Nolan
"Grand Rex"
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Paris "Gaumont Marignan"
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"Grand Mercure Elbeuf"
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"Kinepolis - Lomme"
•
cloneweb.net
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ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
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Christopher Nolan has taken audiences from the
streets of Gotham City, to the infinite world of dreams, to the farthest
reaches of space. Now, for the first time, the innovative
director/writer/producer has turned his camera to a real-life event, one
that has resonated with him throughout his life: the miracle of Dunkirk.
“Dunkirk” is based on the evacuation that—although it took place in the
early months of World War II—had a direct impact on the outcome of the war.
Rather than make a battlefield drama, however, Nolan’s objective was to turn
this historical moment into immediate, immersive cinema: a propulsive,
ticking-clock, epic action thriller in which the stakes couldn’t be higher.
He affirms, “What happened at Dunkirk is one of the greatest stories in
human history, the ultimate life-or-death race against time. It was an
extraordinarily suspenseful situation; that’s the reality. Our aim with this
movie was to throw the audience into that with an absolute respect for
history, but also with a degree of intensity and, of course, a sense of
entertainment, too.”
Nolan’s longtime producing partner, Emma Thomas, offers, “‘Dunkirk’ is a
huge spectacle film, but also a very human story and, in that way, it’s
universal. Chris wanted to put the audience in the center of the experience
along with the characters, whether they be the soldiers on the beach, the
pilots in the air, or the civilians on the boats.”
The remarkable true story that inspired the fictional film is one that has
fascinated Nolan for many years “and one I’ve been wanting to tell for quite
some time,” he says. “Like most British people, I was raised on the mythical
story of the evacuation of Dunkirk, and the victory that was snatched from
the jaws of defeat,” he relates. “It’s a massive part of our culture. It’s
in our bones.”
The story began in late May 1940, when the British Expeditionary Force,
along with French, Belgian and Canadian troops were forced back to the
beaches of Dunkirk. Though home was just 26 miles away, there was no easy
way to reach it. The shallow-drafted beach, with its 21-foot tide,
prohibited the large British naval ships from rescuing the men. But there
was hope: a call had gone out for small boats to aid the effort and a
flotilla of non-military “little ships” sailed out from the southern coast
of England to bring the men home, codenamed Operation Dynamo.
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The film’s historical consultant, Joshua Levine, author of the book
Forgotten Voices of Dunkirk, emphasizes that the 1940 evacuation is far more
than just a British story. “It was a massive event that still has
international significance. Everything that’s celebrated about World War
II—in Britain, in the United States, and all around the world—would not have
happened without the Dunkirk evacuation taking place. It was unbelievably
important. If the British army had been killed or taken prisoner, Britain
would almost certainly have surrendered, and we’d likely be living in a very
different world today. To me, Dunkirk is about the preservation of freedom.
Once those ships were underway, the world still had a chance.”
Kenneth Branagh, who plays the British naval commander, agrees. “Your life
and mine would have been profoundly changed had that courageous, brave,
patient, impossible moment not been lived through by people who stuck at it,
and in so doing protected all of our futures. Its place in our military,
social, political, and emotional history can never be underestimated. In a
sense, you could look at an evacuation as being unheroic, but somehow it
adds up to something phenomenally heroic about the human spirit.”
In fact, the rescue of their stranded army against seemingly impossible odds
gave rise to a term that is a permanent part of the British cultural
lexicon: “the Dunkirk spirit.” Thomas defines, “It’s something English
people pride themselves on: that sort of plucky grit and determination in
the face of adversity.”
Mark Rylance, who plays the captain of one of the little ships, concurs, “It
has a deep meaning for the English people. We were the underdogs on that
beach, but we rose to the occasion and eluded the superior forces of the
enemy at that time. The Dunkirk spirit has to do with that perseverance and
endurance and also selflessness.”
Newcomer Fionn Whitehead, who takes on the role of one of the young British
soldiers on the beach, says, “The Dunkirk spirit brings to my mind a sense
of togetherness and a show of community—coming together to help out someone
in trouble.”
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It was with a friend on his small sailing boat—similar to those that formed
the “little ships”—that Nolan and Thomas first visited Dunkirk during the
mid-1990s. The trip would give them a whole new appreciation for the seminal
event they had only read about. Hampered by rough seas and bad weather, the
voyage across the Channel unexpectedly took 19 hours. “It was a very arduous
crossing,” Nolan recalls, “and that was with nobody dropping bombs on us.
What really stuck with me was just how extraordinary it was, the notion of
civilians taking small boats into a war zone. They could see the smoke and
the fires for many miles, so their willingness to do that and what that says
about communal spirit are extraordinary.”
Nolan continues, “In looking at how to tell the story, I came fairly early
on to the idea of showing events from the land, sea and air: seeing the
action from the perspectives of the men on the beach, the people coming to
help on the boats, and the pilots trying to protect them from above. I was
immediately struck by the need to use a different time scale for each strand
of the story because the guys on the beach are there for the better part of
a week in the film, while the boat crossing takes place over the course of a
long day, and the action in the Spitfires involves a single hour. Each of
those storylines—one week on land, one day at sea and one hour in the
air—had different temporal characteristics, so in braiding them together
editorially, I had to plot them out very carefully. Intertwining these
stories leads you through the events in a very subjective way and allows you
to understand the journey each of the characters is on, while always trying
to suggest that there are many other unseen journeys. In an event of this
magnitude, you can’t possibly get a comprehensive understanding of so many
individual experiences in a single film.”
Researching the script, Nolan read several books and firsthand accounts. He
also consulted extensively with Levine, whom he says, “very quickly
understood the tricky balance between entertainment and historical accuracy
that we were trying to strike. He also arranged for us to meet with some
surviving veterans of Operation Dynamo. It was a great, great honor to meet
those people and hear about their experiences and discover what Dunkirk
meant to them.”
“Nevertheless,” Thomas notes, “Chris felt strongly that he didn’t want to
put words in the mouths of these real-life heroes, or have to change their
stories for reasons of time or dramatic effect, and decided that the best
way to approach the story was to use fictional characters inspired by those
elements he discovered in doing his research.”
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Seeing the event through the eyes of just a few individual characters was
something that struck Branagh when he read the script. “Chris managed to
weave together a very human story that brings all those personal moments
together within this epic dimension,” the actor states. “He is quite
brilliant in my view, a master filmmaker.”
Rylance adds, “I don’t imagine anyone else could have done a more faithful
and essential telling of this story in a more thrilling and exciting way. I
think it makes for an extraordinary movie-going experience.”
Cast in his third Christopher Nolan film, Tom Hardy agrees. “Time and time
again, Chris consistently manages to raise the bar. He is a true
professional who doesn’t leave a stone unturned or dismiss an opportunity.
He’s always in control and set in his volition, but he is not inflexible.
That’s extremely powerful for an artist. He’s generous, sensitive, funny and
incredibly intelligent, and I trust him—if he says he’s going to do
something, he will.”
To help him achieve his time-bending, threefold vision for the film, Nolan
collaborated with his creative team, including director of photography Hoyte
van Hoytema, production designer Nathan Crowley, costume designer Jeffrey
Kurland, editor Lee Smith, special effects supervisor Scott Fisher and
visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson.
Nolan’s primary goal was to put the audience directly onto the beach,
onboard the boat traversing the Channel, and in the cockpit of the
Spitfires. He had been the first to use IMAX cameras in a major motion
picture, for “The Dark Knight,” and has employed IMAX cameras on all of his
subsequent films. But for “Dunkirk,” he expanded the use of large
format—shooting the entire film with a combination of IMAX and 65mm film,
something, he confirms, “I’ve never done before, but ‘Dunkirk’ is a huge
story and it demanded an enormous canvas.
“The reason we were shooting on IMAX film,” the director continues, “is that
the immersive quality of the image is second to none. When you sit in the
movie theatre, the screen disappears and you really get a very tactile sense
of the imagery. That lends itself to incredible panoramas and large-scale
action. But we’ve also found over the years that if you use it for more
intimate situations, it creates an immediacy that’s very engaging. So our
feeling was, if we could find a way to do it physically, the payoff would be
well worth it.”
Another hallmark of Nolan’s films is his preference for capturing the action
in-camera and eschewing digital effects and CGI as much as possible. “To
me,” he clarifies, “it’s always very important to try and work with real
things and real people. The resulting effect of that is very visceral and
enveloping, and draws you into the story.”
That was equally true for the cast. Cillian Murphy, working with the
director for the fifth time, asserts, “I can only speak for myself, but I do
think the rest of the actors would attest to this as well: when you’re in
the environment and things are happening for real, it leads to a more
honest, truthful portrayal of your character’s journey.”
Adding to the verisimilitude, the filmmakers, cast and crew were honored to
have the opportunity to film a portion of “Dunkirk” on the actual beach and
at the exact same time of year that the miraculous evacuation happened.
There were some logistical challenges, including inclement weather, rough
seas, and the construction of the mole: a narrow, kilometer-long,
wood-boarded breakwater that poked precariously out into the cold waters of
the Channel. Nevertheless, Thomas says it was the best possible choice. “The
beach at Dunkirk is a singular place,” she states. “We looked at other
options, but it became clear that it would be difficult to replicate exactly
the look we needed anywhere else. We all felt very lucky to be able to shoot
at the location where the event occurred.”
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RECRUITING THE CAST
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Christopher Nolan’s quest for authenticity
extended to his choice of actors, especially with regard to the young men
whose lives are on the line. The director expounds, “In each of the three
story strands, I wanted to cast actors who were close to the ages of the
characters. We were determined to be true to the reality of how young these
men would have been when they went off to fight in this terrible conflict.
Some of them were just kids. We wanted fresh faces so the audience can
experience these events through their eyes.”
One of their discoveries was Fionn Whitehead, who makes his big-screen debut
in the key role of Tommy. Coming under fire, the young soldier barely
escapes from the neighboring town only to find himself stranded with
hundreds of thousands of other soldiers on the Dunkirk beach, awaiting their
fate.
Describing his character, Whitehead says, “Tommy is kind of your classic
Average Joe soldier. He’s just very young and inexperienced, and probably
didn’t know what he was signing up for. But he’s resourceful and determined
to do whatever he can to survive.”
Shortly after arriving on the beach, Tommy encounters Gibson, a fellow
soldier with whom he connects. Aneurin Barnard, who plays Gibson, explains,
“The only way they’re gonna get off that beach is by bearing a stretcher
together and trying to get onto the hospital ship at the end of the mole. So
we adopt a very quick relationship and this trust has to happen straight
away. Both of us hold each other’s lives in our hands.”
The plan does get them onto the mole where they meet Alex, portrayed by
Harry Styles in his feature film debut. “Alex is a young soldier who seems
nice, but there’s also this edge to him,” Styles says. “He comes off a
little more hardened than the other guys. Alex likes the idea of being the
tough guy, but he’s also really scared.”
For Styles, it came as no surprise that Tommy, Gibson and Alex would quickly
find a common bond. “I think for the guys in uniform, it didn’t matter what
job the guy next to you did. It was you and him; it was, ‘All right, we’re
on the same side, so we’re sticking together. We’re gonna help each other
out of this.’ It’s just pure camaraderie. They might not even know each
other’s name, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s in the same uniform as you,
so you’re on the same team. It’s like family.”
Tommy, Gibson and Alex’s narrow gateway to freedom is the mole, a perilous
eight-foot-wide pier overseen by the naval officer in charge, Commander
Bolton, played by Kenneth Branagh. “Bolton is the man responsible for
organizing the logistics of boats and ships coming to the mole, where boats
can moor, collect their soldier passengers and then move off,” he says. “And
there is a necessity for that to happen swiftly, with maximum efficiency,
because they’re being fired at. So it’s a position of immense responsibility
in a key area, and Bolton has to be calm under pressure while making
life-or-death decisions. It just simply wasn’t possible to get everyone off
because the numbers were so huge. It’s an appalling situation to be placed
in.”
The ranking army officer on the mole with Bolton is Colonel Winnant. James
D’Arcy, who plays the role, says, “Winnant spends much of his time
discussing with Commander Bolton the logistics of how we’re are going get
the men out of there. Most of the story is told through the eyes of these
kids, who haven’t got a clue what’s going on, so Colonel Winnant and
Commander Bolton are among the few characters who truly understand what is
happening here.”
The two senior officers are also among the very few men on the beach who are
aware of Operation Dynamo: the mobilization of civilian boats that are able
to get closer to shore and save even a fragment of their armed forces.
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One of those boats coming over from England is the Moonstone, a small,
wooden yacht owned and piloted by Mr. Dawson. Mark Rylance relates, “What
drew me to the project was the history and also Chris’s interesting
treatment of the story in his script, which I thought was wonderful.
“My character is one of the many hundreds of English civilians who responded
to a call to take their pleasure yachts or their little boats and sail
across the Channel and get these men off the beach,” Rylance says.
Joining Mr. Dawson on the mission is his 19-year-old son, Peter, played by
Tom Glynn-Carney, who calls making his feature film debut on a Christopher
Nolan film “being thrown in the deep end, but Chris was everything I’d hoped
he’d be and more. He was so helpful and I trusted him with every ounce of my
being. It was also nice being taken under the wing of someone like Mark.
Just watching and learning from him was invaluable and worked for our
relationship on camera as father and son.”
As Mr. Dawson and Peter are about to embark, Peter’s friend George jumps on
the Moonstone, determined to share in what he thinks will be an
adventure…his first. Cast in the role, Barry Keoghan attests, “George just
hops onboard not really understanding what he’s headed for. He looks up to
Mr. Dawson and wants to help, but he is somewhat naïve about what’s
happening on the other side of the Channel.”
However, not everybody on the Moonstone is eager to get to Dunkirk. Midway
in their voyage, Mr. Dawson and the boys pick up a shell-shocked survivor of
a torpedoed ship. Cillian Murphy plays the man known only as the Shivering
Soldier, who has no intention of returning to the hell he’d just barely
escaped. “My character represents the profound effect that war can have on
an individual’s mental state,” Murphy relates.
Regardless of the fact that his character is never given a name, Murphy says
he had no hesitation taking the role for the opportunity to work again with
Nolan. “Chris’s films have this epic nature and scale, yet when you’re
making them, you feel they’re very compact and truthful. You never feel lost
amidst these huge productions because of the way he works. It’s the
proximity he has to the actors—he’s always there going through everything
with you. He’s completely hands-on in every way.”
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Poster
display Copenhagen. Image: Thomas Hauerslev
High above the waters of the Channel and the sands of the beach, RAF
Spitfires soar in to do battle with the Luftwaffe planes that are attacking
the men and boats below. Jack Lowden, who portrays Collins, the youngest of
the Spitfire pilots, says, “Our mission is to protect the soldiers on the
beach. We’re in a sortie over Dunkirk, and pretty quickly it all starts
kicking off. Those guys are up there doing a job. They weren’t drafted;
being an RAF pilot was a choice and a very privileged choice. You had to be
quick and smart. Collins has chosen to do this for himself as much as for
king and country.”
Tom Hardy, who plays Farrier, the more senior RAF pilot, had perhaps the
most personal connection to the project. “My granddad was at Dunkirk,” he
reveals. “He told me about it.”
Emma Thomas says there were other reasons Hardy was perfect for the role.
“He’s in a small cockpit of a plane, so his movements are very restricted,
but Tom has a very big presence and can use his physicality in very
interesting ways. And once again, we have much of his face covered, but the
reason you can do that with Tom is because he is such an expressive actor
you don’t need to see all of his face. There are moments in the film where
all that’s visible are his eyes, and yet he can communicate and tell a story
just with that.”
Hardy says he was eager to reunite with Nolan, stating, “Chris is the best
at what he does. He pushes and inspires me as an actor. I’d jump on any role
just to be in the company.”
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THE CAMPAIGN ON LAND
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"Dunkirk"
in 70mm IMAX at Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. Image: Howard B Haas
The Mole: One Week
Just as the action in the story spans different time frames on land, sea and
air, filming on “Dunkirk” also encompassed all three realms.
One of the most impactful creative decisions made by the filmmakers was to
concentrate the land-based filming at the exact place where the momentous
events occurred nearly eight decades ago. During pre-production, Nolan,
Thomas and production designer Nathan Crowley visited Dunkirk together. “At
first, we didn’t necessarily think we were going to shoot there and we did
explore other possibilities,” says Nolan. “But seeing the reality of the
place and the unique quality of its geography made it inevitable that we
would film there, whatever the challenges might be. So we just dove in.”
One of the first tasks involved in readying the historic beach for filming
was certainly unique to the location. Prior to filming, they swept the area
for any unexploded ordinance that might have remained long-buried in the
sand. Executive producer Jake Myers shares, “We knew our special effects
team would be setting off controlled explosions there, so we had to do
careful surveys and check for anything, even a stray bullet. Fortunately,”
he smiles, “nothing showed up.”
Yet by far the biggest task at Dunkirk was restoring what remained of the
eastern mole to its 1940 form. Crowley says, “I remember standing there on
the beach thinking, ‘Oh God, we’ve got to build an entire pier.’ A mole is a
stone breakwater, and they had put a white, wooden structure on top of it to
off-load ships back in the toll-ship era. That’s what we had to replicate.”
The restoration had a profound impact on historian Joshua Levine. “To
witness the rebuilding that went on at Dunkirk, to make it temporarily what
it had been in 1940, was an enormously emotional experience,” he says. “It
was very moving, very affecting, and I think very important.”
“We had to rebuild the mole because it’s a distinctive feature of Dunkirk,”
notes Thomas. “And it played a vital role in the evacuation, because the
beach itself is extremely shallow, making it impossible for big ships to get
to the shore. So the soldiers crowded onto this narrow breakwater, which,
when you see photos, is an amazing visual.”
Myers adds, “Thousands pushed their way onto this little sliver that juts
out into the ocean and basically stood there, completely vulnerable to
aerial assault.”
The production’s restored mole was also vulnerable to attack, but from
nature. In order to enable their mole to withstand the force of the ocean,
Crowley’s art department had it constructed with 14x14-inch timbers for its
legs, using a crane barge to slowly build it out to sea. “There was about
600 feet of existing pier construction, and then we had to add about 500
feet,” says the production designer. “It was a major undertaking that
required the help of the city, the port authority, the port engineers, and
dredging companies. And because we try to do things in camera, that also
meant getting ships to agree to moor on a set structure. It was very tough
to film practically.”
The weather also proved challenging, to the surprise of the filmmakers who
had hopes that early summer on the coast of France would be beautiful. Part
of the filming schedule coincided with the anniversary dates of the actual
evacuation, from May 27th to June 4th. But while the most crucial days of
the real 1940 evacuation were remarkably calm, the “Dunkirk” shoot was hit
by some truly terrible weather. One storm was so bad that it caused the
waves to tear strips from the production-built mole.
“When the wind blew, the waves just hammered it,” says special effects
supervisor Scott Fisher. “The timbers were massive and the structure was
engineered to withstand a lot of punishment, but the weather was well beyond
what we anticipated. With the constant pounding of the waves, pieces started
peeling off and deck boards started coming up.”
Thomas recalls, “We ended up on various occasions coming in in the morning
and finding that bits of our mole had washed away overnight.”
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"Dunkirk"
in 70mm IMAX at Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. Image: Howard B Haas
“The sea was pretty rough,” Crowley affirms. “The only plus was that every
time the water peeled boards off the mole, it would always deposit them on
the same bit of beach. So we knew where all our parts were, and could go and
get them and put them back on. It was a constant repair job.”
Apart from the mole, Crowley’s team also had to recreate an entirely
different type of water access. “One thing the soldiers did at the time was
build these makeshift piers out of trucks—driving them out into the water
and lining them up,” Crowley illustrates. “So we ended up building a truck
pier, too…and learned the difficulty of building a truck pier,” he deadpans.
Weather wasn’t the only thing that hampered filming on the shoreline. The
tide was almost as much of an obstacle for the production as it had been for
the evacuating army in 1940. Nolan confirms, “The tide—as indeed with the
original events in the film—was a major factor because the swing of the tide
is colossal in Dunkirk.”
Rapidly shifting weather conditions also had implications for continuity.
Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema notes, “The North Sea in that part of
France is very overcast, with low-hanging clouds that are ever-changing. The
sun can break through one moment, and the next you’re in fog. It’s a very
dynamic weather system. If you’re looking for something that appears
consistent and precise throughout every shot, you’re pretty much chasing
your tail. But because this story jumps between these different timelines,
we were able to incorporate that constantly changing light.”
As long as it was safe, Nolan was always game to take advantage of the
inclement atmosphere. “The irony is I’ve been told that I’m known for having
good luck with weather, but truly I have the worst luck with weather,” the
director laughs. “You just have to embrace it, and in that sense, you make
your own luck. In truth, some of the best-looking material you ever get is
shot under the harshest conditions.”
Cast and crew alike appreciated that Nolan was always out there in the thick
of things, braving the elements alongside them. “Chris doesn’t sit down!”
Harry Styles marvels. “Any time there was a break, it was because he knew
everyone else needed one. He wasn’t sitting in some warm tent watching
everything on a monitor. He’s out there mucking in with everyone else. I was
in awe.”
Aneurin Barnard comments, “To put something like this together is something
like a military operation in and of itself. The scale of it was quite
remarkable, and it was a test, with the weather, the explosions, and all the
action.”
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No
Dunkirk display advertisement published in Los Angeles Times. Only a couple
of text-based ads mentions 70mm. Spotted by Mike Coate.
With the cast and thousands of extras on the beach, Fisher and his special
effects team had to carefully plan the explosions resulting from the bombing
runs on the trapped soldiers. “It’s a sandy beach, but there were a lot of
rocks and debris in it,” Fisher says. “For safety, we would go out and dig
holes and then set our charges in. And then we used clean, sifted sand to
fill over the top so there wouldn’t be any rocks flying out of there when
the blasts went off.”
Putting the cast and all the extras in uniform was a colossal task for
costume designer Jeffrey Kurland and his department, beginning with
extensive research. He says, “We looked through books and went on eBay and
bought old magazines from the period. We also watched the old news reels and
found some amazing firsthand accounts. We gathered a great deal of research
and then shared it throughout the entire crew, not just in my department,
because we were all in earnest about wanting to do this thing right.”
That attention to detail was not lost on the cast. Styles shares, “The first
day, I put my uniform on and walked out and Chris checks me over and says,
‘Your boots are laced wrong.’ He explained that the British soldiers did
them looped rather than criss-cross. He had researched everything about
Dunkirk to the nth degree. It was just exciting to be involved in something
like this, where we were all working toward the same end.”
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No
Dunkirk display advertisement published in Los Angeles Times. Only a couple
of text-based ads mentions 70mm. Spotted by Mike Coate.
The main challenge for Kurland’s team was that every item of clothing had to
be made from scratch. “We didn’t rent anything, because we were afraid that
we would ruin too many pieces, so everything had to be created,” Kurland
explains. “But because we owned everything, we could do anything to it we
wanted to. We milled the wool to make the uniforms, and then the nap of the
fabric had to be shaved down because the tone did not match what Chris was
looking for. I also wanted to make the wool a bit thinner, so we had to
dampen each individual piece and then carefully take it down with a blow
torch. And then we went in and aged it on top of that. It was a huge process
that took a great deal of time.”
Most of the extras came from the town of Dunkirk and the surrounding area,
“so not just the town itself played a part in the film, but the residents,
too,” says Thomas. “The mayor lent us an enormous amount of support in every
way.
“It’s quite something, being in that place,” Thomas goes on to reflect. “To
this day there are reminders of the events of 1940 that show themselves all
the time. When the tide is particularly low you can still see a shipwreck of
a boat that went down right next to the mole. And buttons and buckles from
soldiers’ uniforms are still being found. It’s really incredible.”
Shooting in Dunkirk made a strong impression on the actors playing the
soldiers. More than anything, it truly brought home to them just how it must
have been for those young men on the beach nearly eight decades ago. Fionn
Whitehead relates, “There were definitely days where I was pretty beaten.
There was a driving rain, it was freezing, the wind was very strong, and we
were all soaked through. We had our period uniforms on, which were made of
wool, so they just soaked up all the water. It was so unbelievably
miserable,” he admits. “But then I became overwhelmed by the realness of the
situation for the soldiers at the time. It was so easy to imagine when you
came out onto the beach and the water was coming in and explosions were
going off... That really brought it home. It was no longer just a story. I
was able to empathize with the soldiers in a way I never had before. It made
me realize how terrible it was for them and the real struggle they had.”
That empathy was shared by the filmmakers. “The moments where it really hit
home for me,” Thomas shares, “were when I was feeling worn down by the
physicality of being out in the elements on that beach for days on end. But
of course, no one was attacking me, and I was able to go back to a nice warm
bed at night. It was a reminder of what those men had been through on that
beach.”
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ON THE WATER
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Dunkirk
in 70mm on the Grand Lake in Oakland, USA. Image: Tyler Brady
The Sea: One Day
While some of the water sequences were filmed near Dunkirk in the English
Channel, most of the Moonstone scenes were shot in the Netherlands on a
shallow artificial lake called Ijsselmeer. Nolan offers, “At Hoyte’s
suggestion, we had gone to Ijsselmeer, which is non-tidal, so we could
anchor sets to the bottom without having to worry about the tide coming in
and out. The depth is between 12 and 14 feet and it looks like open water
and rolls the way the sea does, though generally a little calmer.”
In preparation for the water shoot, Nolan organized several scout trips with
his key crew. The director says, “We really experienced the movement of the
boats and talked in great detail about how that would photograph. The basic
philosophy that emerged was to shoot with as much handheld camera as
possible, because when you have a great handheld cameraman like Hoyte, he is
your most stable and versatile camera platform on a boat going up and down
with the waves. And we would do that in combination with a very efficient
camera boat that could keep pace with the other boats so we could shoot
boat-to-boat in a very versatile way as well. Those became our two most
important approaches for how to work on water.”
The camera boat used for “Dunkirk” was an ingenious adaptation of equipment
Nolan had used for car sequences in his “Dark Knight” movies, called the
Edge. Myers describes, “It’s a crane mounted to a Mercedes SUV. We wanted to
create a boat equivalent of that, so we found a big catamaran and mounted
this 26-foot-long, gyro-stabilized, telescopic crane to the front of it. It
was very nimble and could turn and maneuver easily while holding the IMAX
cameras, allowing them to be as close to the water level as possible. We
used this platform to shoot virtually everything at sea.”
The film presented Edge coordinator Dean Bailey—more used to working on
cars—with some interesting trials. “Everything is slower in a boat,” he
remarks. “You can’t hold your position; the wind affects you, as do the
waves, the tide, the currents… And the system was wet every day for almost
two months. But we designed it to be waterproof and to sustain that pounding
day in, and day out.”
“This was the first time the Edge guys had mounted the crane on such a large
craft in a way that it had great access to the water,” says NoIan. “It was a
very robust camera platform in that it could go out in very challenging
conditions.”
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Dunkirk
in 70mm on the Grand Lake in Oakland, USA. Image: Tyler Brady
To help gather all the ships and boats required for the production, Nathan
Crowley worked with experienced marine coordinator Neil Andrea to track down
dozens of surviving vessels from the period, from nine different countries.
They included three minesweepers, a hospital ship and a 350-foot-long French
destroyer named the Maillé-Brézé, which, because it no longer had an engine,
was tugged up from Nantes, where she’d rested as a museum ship since 1991.
The last provides one of the film’s most striking visuals, “where the
Moonstone sails alongside the big destroyer with hundreds of soldiers
standing on its deck,” Thomas says. “I think it’s one of the moments in
‘Dunkirk’ that really resonates with me because it sums up the amazing
nature of the story—the idea that regular people on pleasure boats managed
to make a real difference for the military.”
The production purchased a quaint 40-foot yacht, built in 1939, to serve as
Mr. Dawson’s Moonstone. Andrea says, “We bought the boat because that gave
us the latitude to do whatever we needed to do with it, with cast, crew and
IMAX cameras on it.”
Mark Rylance, who shot almost all his scenes on the Moonstone, became
particularly enamored of his character’s vessel. “I really fell in love with
her,” he confirms. “I spent many hours sitting down in the cabin. She’s got
a beautiful cabin, which the wonderful art department decorated with little
books on the shelf and all this old stuff from the period. Even when you
opened the drawers, they had these beautiful old tins and things from the
1940s. But she didn’t have a deep keel, so she rocked about like anything in
the water.”
“I definitely had to get used to it,” Barry Keoghan remembers. “I was kind
of nervous the first few days until I found my sea legs. We spent a lot of
time just hanging about on the Moonstone and all got very comfortable
walking up and down on deck. Chris wanted us to feel like we owned that
boat, and I think that will show.”
Van Hoytema reveals that the biggest issue for him was shouldering the
heavy, large-format cameras on the small, pitching deck. “It was not a walk
in the park,” the cinematographer allows. “It was cramped and it was very
hard to hold the camera in the waves. But I had this wonderful key grip,
Ryan Monro, who was pretty much my right hand in terms of camera support. He
would rig himself into a harness, which he would attach via cables to
eyelets on the hull of the boat, and stand next to me and help support the
camera. We developed a symbiotic way to enable me to stand freely and keep
balance so I could operate the camera.”
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"Dunkirk"
in New York. Image by Dennis Furbush
“It could be grueling,” Nolan acknowledges, “but it was fun as well because
it gets back to the type of filmmaking that Hoyte and I like the most, and I
believe the actors also like the most—absolute minimal crew, in the moment,
there in the elements.”
Filming scenes in the Channel or on the lake meant that other departments
also had to be out on the water, forming their own flotilla. In addition to
the camera boats, there were safety boats, makeup and hair boats, wardrobe
boats and more. Even meals had to be ferried out to the cast and crew. But
unlike a land-based production, it wasn’t so easy to move out of the way
when Nolan moved the camera for a different angle. Thomas notes, “Every time
you shot in a certain direction, all those boats would have to move so they
were out of the shot, and that was a remarkable thing to get a glimpse of.”
On the production’s biggest day at sea—during the week they filmed the
little ships’ crossing—there were as many as 62 boats gathered on the
English Channel. The filmmakers were extremely gratified that among them
were some of the boats that had actually sailed from England in 1940 to
rescue the men from the Dunkirk beach, and have been maintained ever since
by the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships. The ships recreating their
courageous and historic journey for the film were the Caronia, Elvin,
Endeavour, Hilfranor, Mary Jane, Mimosa, MTB 102, New Britannic, Nyula,
Papillon, Princess Elizabeth, and RIIS I.
Some of the ships acquired for the film were repurposed in inventive ways.
The minesweepers, for example, were dressed by Crowley’s team to look like
destroyers in background shots. Crowley remarks, “We also got an old Coast
Guard ship from Rotterdam, which was about 200 feet long, to which we added
scaled-down guns and towers and clad the exterior to give it a destroyer
profile.”
However, not everything could be achieved on the waters of the Channel or
Ijsselmeer. Fisher explains, “We built gimbals on Stage 16 at Warner Bros.,
which has one of the largest water tanks in the world. We used it for
interiors of ships that required some effects with hulls buckling, and
things like that. We also did some exteriors at Falls Lake at Universal
Studios, where we shot the sinking of a 120,000-pound ship.”
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TAKING WING
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sized "Dunkirk" banners (3,5 x 1,7 meters), printed for outdoor use at
Schauburg Cinerama's Open Air showings i Karlsruhe, Germany.
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The Air: One Hour
As the Moonstone makes its crossing to Dunkirk, Mr. Dawson, Peter and George
are thrilled to see an RAF Spitfire flying overhead. But for the actors,
this was no visual effect: three vintage Spitfires were filmed soaring in
the skies above the Channel. Tom Glynn-Carney says it did not require much
acting to be awed by the sight. “Playing in those situations, literally all
you had to do was watch what was happening. It was just insane to have
Spitfires flying a few feet above your head. When do you ever get to see
something like that? It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!”
During pre-production Nolan went for his own flight in a Spitfire, and urged
both van Hoytema and Crowley to do so as well to truly feel the dynamics of
the magnificent planes that helped defend the men at Dunkirk. “When you go
up in a Spitfire, which I was lucky enough to do,” Nolan says, “you get an
extraordinary degree of respect for the people who were flying those planes
and enduring the conditions. I mean, it’s very exciting, but it is not a
comfortable machine to be in. The degree of physical stamina and
concentration—in addition to the obvious courage that the pilots had to
have—became a fascinating thing to portray.”
To capture the film’s furiously intense aerial engagements, Nolan again
pushed the envelope on what could be achieved practically, especially with
large-format cameras. He remarks, “In today’s era, with GoPro cameras and
the like, people are getting very used to seeing extreme physical events
from very interesting subjective angles. As a filmmaker, that raises the bar
in terms of trying to depict planes from 1940 in a way that modern audiences
can respond to. We wanted to show everything from the pilots’ point of view,
but still using IMAX cameras. It was a major challenge to have that huge
camera in the cockpit of the Spitfire, but we were determined to do it.”
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sized "Dunkirk" banners (3,5 x 1,7 meters), printed for outdoor use at
Schauburg Cinerama's Open Air showings i Karlsruhe, Germany.
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The first step was obtaining the planes. Nathan Crowley secured three
Spitfires—two Mark 1s and one Mark 5—as well as a Spanish HA-1112 Buchón to
double for the German ME-109s, better known as Messerschmitts. However,
Nolan acknowledges, “We did take certain liberties with historical accuracy
for narrative reasons. For example, our ME-109 Messerschmitts have yellow
noses, when at that point, they had not yet started to paint the ME-109s
like that. But it allows the audience to more easily distinguish the enemy
from the Spitfires.”
In addition, stunt coordinator Tom Struthers came up with the idea of
utilizing a Yak-52, a two-seater Soviet aircraft that is similar enough to
the Spitfire that Crowley’s team could dress it as one of the iconic British
fighter planes for close-up shots of the actors in the cockpit.
To shoot these action sequences, van Hoytema worked with the man he calls
Panavision’s “lens guru,” Dan Sasaki, to devise a pivoting, periscope-style
lens that enabled him to fit the large IMAX camera vertically into
restricted cockpit spaces. With that, they could shoot the pilot’s line of
sight, looking through the canopy.
“The intimate physicality of that tiny cockpit… We really focused on that
being one of the most important aspects of the film—putting the audience in
that seat. It was an extremely difficult thing to do,” says Nolan.
Van Hoytema also recruited aerial engineer Andy McCluskie to build a rig
that allowed an IMAX camera to be safely mounted on the Yak. Nolan details,
“We adapted our Yak to provide a camera platform, enabling us to take our
actors up for closeups from different angles, using different camera mounts,
while actually in the air. We wanted to get that feeling of really being in
a dogfight.”
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sized "Dunkirk" banners (3,5 x 1,7 meters), printed for outdoor use at
Schauburg Cinerama's Open Air showings i Karlsruhe, Germany.
Click to see larger version
For Jack Lowden, shooting scenes in flight was nothing short of
exhilarating. “Making this film was the whole package for me. I’ve been up
in the air in a Yak. I’ve been swooping around over the Channel with real
Spitfires… I said to Chris, ‘This is gonna make every other job I do
boring,’” he laughs.
The other camera aircraft employed during production were a helicopter and
the Aerostar camera plane. Aerial director of photography Hans Bjerno points
out, “The limiting factor with the helicopter is speed. It can only go at
120 miles per hour, whereas the Spitfires fly at 200 miles per hour. So,
with that, you’re basically an eye in the sky, watching the airplanes go
through. But the Aerostar can go at the same speed.”
The dogfights in “Dunkirk” required the pilots actually flying the various
aircraft to choreograph tightly all the maneuvers. Nolan attests, “Because
of the speeds at which things happened, our real pilots needed to take a lot
of time on the ground to really plan things and prepare. Once you get up in
the air, communication—particularly with these older aircraft, which are
very noisy—can be difficult.”
The first step was for visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson to map out
with Nolan how each aerial sequence would play out. “We started working
quite early on,” says Jackson, “laying out exactly what the planes were
doing during each of the air battles using computer pre-visualization. That
meant we started the film with a broad sketch of what the overall action
would be.”
Using that as their guide, the pilots discussed each aerial scene with Nolan
and van Hoytema before take-off. “We talked about how we saw it playing out
and what we thought the shot should be,” says Nolan. “Then the pilots would
talk among themselves and walk a pattern, literally pretending to be
airplanes. Sometimes they’d even hold their hands out like wings. At first,
for an outsider looking at the process, it seemed an odd way to approach it.
But you rapidly realize after doing a couple of flights with these guys that
it’s an incredibly precise and smart way to make sure that everybody on the
team knows exactly where they’re meant to be, and at what point.”
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sized "Dunkirk" banners (3,5 x 1,7 meters), printed for outdoor use at
Schauburg Cinerama's Open Air showings i Karlsruhe, Germany.
Click to see larger version
Jackson also spent time with the aerial unit shooting airplanes and cockpit
point-of-view shots through the gun sights. “We put cameras inside the
canopies of the planes and moved them around to get sun flares and other
atmospheric effects,” he says. “Those elements could then be composited on
top of the real planes we flew.”
While tremendous strides were made in capturing the aerial footage, not all
the cockpit scenes with Hardy and Lowden could be achieved in flight. “There
were certain shots we knew we’d have to get on a set,” says Thomas, “so the
art department built an amazing gimbal with a cockpit of a Spitfire on it
that Chris was able to manually control himself.”
Nevertheless, the director insists, “We took the view of not using any green
screens or blue screens. We wanted to shoot the scenes in a way that there
was always a background of real water at an appropriate altitude, with real
sky and natural lighting.”
To accomplish this, the production was given permission to place their
gimbal at a U.S. Coast Guard facility on a sea cliff in Palos Verdes,
California. “Having a high-altitude platform where we could film the actors
‘flying’ the plane gave us a base level of reality to intercut with the real
air-to-air photography. In that way, we could create a consistency with the
dogfight sequences,” Nolan offers.
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ECHOES OF DUNKIRK
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"Dunkirk"
in Berlin. Image by Gerhard Witte
When principal photography on “Dunkirk”
wrapped, Nolan reunited with two longtime collaborators, editor Lee Smith
and composer Hans Zimmer, to complete his epic thriller. Sound and music
merged to underscore the race against time.
Nolan offers, “The unusual rhythm of the script needed to be amplified by
the music. The score plays in the film as one long piece with a unifying and
complex tonal structure. Sound effects and the varying time scales of the
story are woven into the fabric of Hans’s music.”
Sound designer and supervising sound editor Richard King recorded the motor
of the Moonstone, as well as other ships, “and then all that was sent
through to Hans Zimmer’s facility,” Smith explicates. “They sampled them in
such a way that the engine sounds are always accelerating. Also, Hans
recorded the ticking of Chris’s watch, which was synthesized. In combination
with the music, it all has an incredible drive to it.”
Adding to the suspense, Nolan and Zimmer also implemented a variation on a
shepherd tone—a technique that creates the auditory illusion of a tone
that’s continually ascending in pitch.
At Nolan’s suggestion, Zimmer blended into his score an adaptation of
“Nimrod,” Edward Elgar’s soaring theme, which Nolan describes as being “as
beloved to the English as the story of Dunkirk itself.”
Zimmer brought in composer and orchestrator Benjamin Wallfisch who, together
with Nolan and music editor Alex Gibson, “fashioned a modern reworking that
grows out of the sights and sounds of the movie,” the director notes.
“Hans’s own brass accents intensify the power of the piece. We wanted the
score to echo the circumstances of the event we are honoring—a story of
survival, and a triumph of a communal effort, as opposed to the heroism of
any one individual.
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"Dunkirk"
at the Rex in Paris. Image by Grand Rex
“The events of Dunkirk are sacred ground,” Nolan reflects, “not to be
ventured onto without great care. It’s daunting for a filmmaker, but also
irresistible. There were moments when I looked at the very large re-creation
of events we pulled off—the real little ships arriving, with naval
destroyers in the sea, and rebuilding the mole—and it felt quite
extraordinary. To have that many different elements come together definitely
made a lasting impression on me.”
Yet the filmmakers agree that their first priority was always to entertain,
and every creative decision Nolan made was intended to transport audiences
to that place and time. “The thing Chris does in his movies, which I really
appreciate, is that when you watch them in the cinema, you’re experiencing
something you couldn’t really experience anywhere else,” Thomas states.
“We want to put people on the beach at Dunkirk, on the deck of the Moonstone
and in the cockpit of a Spitfire,” Nolan concludes. “We want to take the
audience on a very intense ride. That’s the experience we want to give the
audience—to make them feel that they’re actually there and allow them to
feel what that would be like.”
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ABOUT THE CAST
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Mr.
Nolan at "Dunkirk" premiere at the Rex in Paris. Image by Grand Rex
FIONN WHITEHEAD (Tommy) makes his feature film
debut in “Dunkirk.” He will next be seen on the big screen in the drama “The
Children Act,” directed by Richard Eyre and starring Emma Thompson and
Stanley Tucci.
On television, Whitehead starred in the title role of the 2016 ITV
miniseries “Him.”
Earlier this year, he earned critical acclaim for his performance in Glenn
Waldron’s play “Natives,” presented at the Southwark Playhouse. This July,
Whitehead will star in the Old Vic Theatre production of “Queers.”
TOM GLYNN-CARNEY (Peter) makes his feature film debut in “Dunkirk.”
Glynn-Carney can currently be seen at the Royal Court Theatre in “The
Ferryman,” directed by Sam Mendes. The Royal Court run sold out in one day,
making it the fastest-selling play in the history of the theatre. In June,
the widely acclaimed production transferred to the West End for a 16-week
run at the Gielgud Theatre. Written by Jez Butterworth, the play also stars
Paddy Considine and Laura Donnelly.
This summer, Glynn-Carney also stars in Peter Moffat’s “The Last Post,” for
the BBC One. Set in 1965, the series also stars Jessica Raine, Ben Miles and
Stephen Campbell Moore.
Glynn-Carney trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and began his
career on the stage. His credits include “Peter Pan” at the Lyric Theatre
Lowry, and “Macbeth” at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. While at
Guildhall, he also starred in a number of in-house productions, including
“Richard II,” “Into the Woods,” “The Apple Cart” and “Oedipus Rex.”
JACK LOWDEN (Collins) is an award-winning stage actor who has gained
attention for his recent work in several film and television projects.
Following “Dunkirk,” Lowden has leading roles in a number of diverse
features. He stars as Steven Patrick Morrissey in the Mark Gill-directed
biopic “England is Mine,” which chronicles Morrissey’s early life before
going on to become the lead singer of the ‘80s band The Smiths. The film,
also starring Jessica Brown Findlay, will close the Edinburgh International
Film Festival in July. His upcoming films also include Stephen Merchant’s
wrestling comedy-drama “Fighting with My Family,” alongside Dwayne Johnson,
Lena Headey, Vince Vaughn and Florence Pugh; and the romantic drama “Cross
My Mind,” in which he stars opposite Sally Hawkins under the direction of
János Szász. He will also star in Josie Rourke’s “Mary Queen of Scots,”
based on John Guy’s acclaimed biography Queen of Scots: The True Life of
Mary Stuart. Lowden will portray Lord Darnley, opposite Saoirse Ronan in the
title role and Margot Robbie as Queen Elizabeth I.
Lowden also recently starred as legendary Scottish golfing champion Tommy
Morris in “Tommy’s Honour.” The film premiered at the 2016 Edinburgh Film
Festival and opened in the U.S. in April 2017. His previous film credits
include “Denial” and “A United Kingdom,” which both premiered at the 2016
Toronto International Film Festival; and “U Want Me 2 Kill Him?” which
marked his film debut.
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"Dunkirk"
premiere at the Rex in Paris. Image by Grand Rex
On television, Lowden starred last year as Nikolai Rostov in “War & Peace,”
A&E’s ambitious miniseries adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic, directed by Tom
Harper. He previously appeared in the PBS miniseries “Wolf Hall”; the
WWI-set miniseries “The Passing Bells”; and the series “The Tunnel” and “Mrs
Biggs.”
On the stage, Lowden won an Olivier Award and an Ian Charleson Award for his
performance as Oswald in Richard Eyre’s 2013 revival of Ibsen’s “Ghosts.”
That same year, he played Orestes in “Electra” at the Old Vic. In 2013, he
starred as Scottish runner and missionary Eric Liddell in the stage
adaptation of the Oscar-winning film “Chariots of Fire.”
A graduate of the Scottish Royal Academy of Music and Drama, Lowden first
gained attention with his breakthrough role in The National Theatre of
Scotland’s 2010 revival of “Black Watch.” Lowden received widespread
critical acclaim when the production toured the UK and then several cities
in the U.S., including New York and Chicago.
HARRY STYLES (Alex) makes his acting debut in “Dunkirk.”
Styles also just made his solo music debut with his self-titled debut album,
released in May. The 10-track album features the lead single “Sign of the
Times,” which topped the iTunes charts in over 84 countries upon release
day. The album made history with the biggest debut sales week for a U.K.
male artist’s first full-length album since Nielsen Music began tracking
sales in 1991, and it topped official charts at #1 in more than 55
countries. In support of the new music, he made acclaimed appearances on
“Saturday Night Live,” including performing in multiple comedy sketches;
“The Graham Norton Show”; and a week-long residency on “The Late Late Show
with James Corden.” In the fall, Styles will embark on a sold-out world
tour, performing in intimate venues across 13 U.S. cities before heading to
Europe and wrapping in Japan.
As the star of the global phenomenon One Direction, Styles became one of the
best-known musicians in the world. With the group, Styles sold more than 65
million records worldwide, achieved a total of 137 number ones, and won five
Billboard Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, and five American Music
Awards. One Direction was the first band in history to have its first four
albums debut at number one on the Billboard 200 charts.
ANEURIN BARNARD (Gibson), an Olivier Award winner, is one of the industry’s
most promising young actors, with roles in several critically acclaimed
film, television and theatre productions to his credit. “Dunkirk” marks his
first major studio release.
Upcoming, Barnard stars in Tom Edmunds’ independent comedy feature “Dead in
a Week: Or Your Money Back,” alongside Tom Wilkinson and Marion Bailey.
Earlier this year, he starred as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in John
Stephenson’s “Interlude in Prague,” also starring James Purefoy and Samantha
Barks; and George Mendeluk’s “Bitter Harvest,” also with Barks, as well as
Terence Stamp and Max Irons.
His previous film credits include leading roles in “The Truth About
Emanuel”; “The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box”; “Mary Queen of
Scots”; “Trap for Cinderella”; the award-winning “Citadel,” for which
Barnard won the Best Actor Award at the 2012 Puchon International Film
Festival; “Hunky Dory,” in which he also showcased his singing talents; and
“Ironclad.”
Barnard has also been recognized for his work on the small screen. He was
seen earlier this year in the BBC miniseries “SS-GB,” a dystopian drama
based on Len Deighton’s 1978 novel. Last year, he starred in two very
different BBC miniseries “War & Peace,” adapted from Tolstoy’s classic
novel, for which he earned a Welsh BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actor;
and “Thirteen.” In addition, he has had starring roles in such notable
television projects as “The Scandalous Lady W,” “Killing Jesus,” “Cilla,” “Moonfleet,”
“The White Queen,” and “We’ll Take Manhattan.”
A graduate of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Barnard first
gained attention playing the lead role of Melchior Gabor in the Tony
Award-winning musical “Spring Awakening.” For his performance, he won a 2010
Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He was also named a Star of
Tomorrow by trade publication Screen International.
JAMES D'ARCY (Colonel Winnant) will next be seen in Tomas Alfredson’s crime
drama “The Snowman,” with Michael Fassbender and J.K. Simmons. The film is
slated for release in Fall 2017.
His additional feature film credits include James McTeigue’s thriller
“Survivor”; the comedy “Let’s Be Cops,” opposite Damon Wayans Jr. and Jake
Johnson; “Jupiter Ascending” and “Cloud Atlas,” both for the Wachowskis; the
biopic “Hitchcock,” opposite Anthony Hopkins; the historical drama “W.E.”;
and Peter Weir’s “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.”
On the small screen, D’Arcy played leading roles in ABC’s “Agent Carter,”
opposite Hayley Atwell, and A&E’s serial killer drama “Those Who Kill,”
alongside Chloë Sevigny. He was also seen as the villain in season 2 of the
critically acclaimed UK series “Broadchurch.”
BARRY KEOGHAN (George) stars with Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman in Yorgos
Lanthimos’s drama “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” The film just premiered to
great acclaim at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and will also screen at the
Toronto International Film Festival. It is slated for release this fall.
Also upcoming, Keoghan stars in Bart Layton’s independent feature “American
Animals.”
His previous credits include Konstantin Bojanov’s “Light Thereafter”; Adam
Smith’s “Trespass Against Us,” with Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson;
“Traders”; Martin Radich’s “Norfolk”; “Stay”; and Yann Demange’s
award-winning “`71,” opposite Jack O’Connell.
Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Keoghan first gained attention for his
role on the Irish television series “Love/Hate.” He went on to become one of
Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow in 2015, and one year later was the
breakout star of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival for his performance in
Rebecca Daly’s “Mammal,” opposite Rachel Griffiths. Most recently, the
Hollywood Reporter picked Keoghan as their Cannes: Next Big Thing recipient.
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70mm
trailer for "Murder on the Orient Express" by Kenneth Branagh. Picture by
Herbert Born
KENNETH BRANAGH (Commander Bolton) is one of the world’s most consistently
acclaimed filmmakers and actors. He is currently directing the upcoming
“Murder on the Orient Express,” adapted from Agatha Christie’s novel and due
out on November 10, 2017. He also plays Hercule Poirot in the film, joining
an all-star cast also including Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Michelle
Pfeiffer and Judi Dench.
In 2016, The Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company completed its successful
inaugural season of Plays at the Garrick Theatre in London’s West End. Their
productions included Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” co-directed by
Branagh, who played Leontes opposite Judi Dench; Terence Rattigan’s
“Harlequinade” and “All on Her Own”; Francis Veber’s “The Painkiller,”
directed by Sean Foley with Branagh starring opposite Rob Brydon; Lolita
Chakrabarti’s “Red Velvet”; Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” co-directed by
Rob Ashford and Branagh; and John Osborne’s “The Entertainer,” directed by
Ashford with Branagh playing the lead role of Archie Rice.
For the screen, Branagh recently directed the live-action “Cinderella,”
starring Cate Blanchett, Lily James, Richard Madden and Helena Bonham
Carter. Released in March 2015, it went on to gross over $540 million. He
previously directed the latest installment of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan
franchise, “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” in which he also starred alongside
Chris Pine and Keira Knightley. Additionally, Branagh starred in and
co-directed “Macbeth” for the Manchester International Festival in the
summer of 2013. In June 2014, Branagh reprised the title role in the
production of “Macbeth” at the Park Avenue Armory, which marked his New York
stage debut. It opened to rave reviews and was a critical and commercial
success.
In 2011, Branagh starred in Simon Curtis’s “My Week with Marilyn,” opposite
Michelle Williams. His portrayal of the legendary Laurence Olivier in the
film earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, as
well as Golden Globe, BAFTA Award and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award
nominations in the same category. This marked Branagh’s fifth career Academy
Award nomination, making him one of the first people to receive five
nominations in five separate categories (Actor, Supporting Actor, Director,
Screenplay, and Short). In addition, Branagh directed the action adventure
“Thor,” starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins. Also
released in 2011, the film grossed more than $448 million worldwide.
Branagh was met with instant success with his first venture into filmmaking:
the 1989 production of “Henry V,” which he adapted from the Shakespeare play
and both starred in and directed. The film won a score of international
awards, including dual Academy Award nominations for Branagh, for Best Actor
and Best Director, and a BAFTA Award win for Best Direction.
He was subsequently invited to Hollywood to direct and star in “Dead Again,”
which was an international hit, and he then directed himself in the ensemble
film “Peter’s Friends,” which won the Evening Standard Peter Sellers Award
for Comedy. Branagh’s second Shakespearean film success as actor, director,
writer and producer was 1993’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” which was invited
to screen at the Cannes Film Festival. In the same year, his short film of
the Chekhov play “Swan Song” received an Academy Award nomination.
Branagh went on to direct Robert De Niro in the international hit “Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein,” and his black & white film “A Midwinter’s Tale” won
the prestigious Osella d’Oro at the 1995 Venice Film Festival and opened the
1996 Sundance Film Festival. His critically acclaimed full-length version of
“Hamlet,” presented in 70mm, garnered four Academy Award nominations. His
fourth Shakespeare film adaptation was a 1930’s musical version of “Love’s
Labour’s Lost.” More recently, Branagh directed “As You Like It”; a film of
Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute”; and “Sleuth,” scripted by Harold Pinter
and starring Jude Law and Michael Caine.
His other film acting work includes Pat O’Connor’s “A Month in the Country,”
Oliver Parker’s “Othello,” Robert Altman’s “The Gingerbread Man,” Woody
Allen’s “Celebrity,” Danny Boyle’s “Alien Love Triangle,” Paul Greengrass’s
“The Theory of Flight,” Barry Sonnenfeld’s “Wild Wild West,” Phillip Noyce’s
“Rabbit-Proof Fence,” Chris Columbus’s “Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets,” Richard Curtis’s “Pirate Radio,” and Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie.”
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display, Schauburg, Karlsruhe. Picture by Herbert Born
Branagh has also appeared in several outstanding television dramas,
including his portrayal of Detective Kurt Wallander in the BAFTA
Award-winning series “Wallander,” which earned him Emmy and Golden Globe
nominations. He has also starred in the title role of “Shackleton,” for
Channel 4; A&E’s “Conspiracy,” for which he won an Emmy for Best Actor and
earned Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations; and “Warm Springs,”
portraying FDR, for which he received Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Award
nominations.
Branagh’s stage work began when he made his West End acting debut in
“Another Country,” which earned him the Society of West End Theatre Award
for Most Promising Newcomer. He founded the Renaissance Theatre Company for
which he either starred in or directed the plays “Twelfth Night,” “Much Ado
About Nothing,” “As You Like It,” “Hamlet,” “Look Back in Anger,” “Uncle
Vanya,” “King Lear,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Coriolanus” and “The Life
of Napoleon.” He also wrote the plays “Public Enemy” and “Tell Me Honestly.”
His numerous stage appearances also include the Royal Shakespeare Company’s
“Henry V,” “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and “Hamlet.” His more recent theatrical
endeavors include directing the hit stage comedy “The Play What I Wrote,”
which transferred from London’s West End to Broadway, where it received a
Tony nomination; and acclaimed performances on the British stage in “Richard
III”; David Mamet’s “Edmond”; Chekhov’s “Ivanov”; and “The Painkiller,” in
the opening season at the new Lyric Theatre in Belfast, Branagh’s hometown.
Branagh is a graduate and now President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Arts and holds a prestigious Michael Balcon Award from the British Academy
of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). In 2013, he received a Knighthood for
his services to drama and the community in Northern Ireland.
CILLIAN MURPHY (Shivering Soldier) has starred in major studio hits,
award-winning independent films, a celebrated television series, and on the
stages of London, New York and theatres around the globe.
Murphy most recently starred in Sally Potter’s “The Party,” which premiered
in competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival and also stars Emily
Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Timothy Spall, and Bruno Ganz. He also recently
starred with Brie Larson in Ben Wheatley’s “Free Fire,” executive produced
by Martin Scorsese, which premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film
Festival and was released in 2017; and in the historical thriller
“Anthropoid.” Upcoming, he also stars in the independent film “Delinquent
Season,” due out later this year. He next begins work on Jim Sheridan’s
true-life action drama “H-Block,” a film about the violent IRA breakout from
Maze Prison in 1983, in which Murphy will star with Jamie Dornan and Pierce
Brosnan.
On the small screen, Murphy stars in the award-winning drama series “Peaky
Blinders,” in which he plays Tommy, the most ruthless brother in a family of
Birmingham gangsters. The BBC Two/Netflix series is now in its fourth
season.
Murphy first garnered international attention for his performance as Jim,
the reluctant survivor in Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later.” In 2005, he made an
indelible impression as Dr. Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow in Christopher
Nolan’s “Batman Begins,” for which he received a London Film Critics Circle
Award nomination. He reprised the role in Nolan’s blockbusters “The Dark
Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises” and later reunited with the director to
play the billionaire mark in the acclaimed hit “Inception.” “Dunkirk” marks
their fifth collaboration.
Murphy received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as the
transgender outcast Patrick “Kitten” Brady in Neil Jordan’s 2005 feature
“Breakfast on Pluto.” That same year, he starred opposite Rachel McAdams in
Wes Craven’s thriller “Red Eye.”
In 2006, he starred in Ken Loach’s Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner
“The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” and then re-teamed with Boyle on the 2007
sci-fi thriller “Sunshine.” Murphy garnered consecutive British Independent
Film Award nominations for his performance in the two films.
He more recently received his third British Independent Film Award
nomination for his work in Rufus Norris’s drama “Broken,” which opened the
International Critics’ Week section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and won
the Best British Independent Film Award.
Murphy’s diverse filmography also includes Ron Howard’s “In the Heart of the
Sea,” with Chris Hemsworth; Claudia Llosa’s Berlin Film Festival entry
“Aloft,” with Jennifer Connelly; “Perrier’s Bounty,” with Brendan Gleeson
and Jim Broadbent; John Crowley’s “Intermission,” with Colin Farrell and
Kelly Macdonald; Peter Webber’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” opposite
Scarlett Johansson; Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain”; and John Carney’s
“On the Edge.”
Murphy regularly returns to the stage, often collaborating with Irish
playwright Enda Walsh. Their latest collaboration, “Ballyturk,” ran at the
National Theatre in London following critically acclaimed, sold-out runs in
Ireland. Murphy previously starred in Walsh’s stunning one-man play “Misterman,”
winning the Irish Times Theatre Award for the original production at the
Galway Arts Festival. The play was then presented at the National Theatre
before moving to St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, where Murphy
received the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance. Murphy
first made his mark on stage with a stunning performance in Walsh’s “Disco
Pigs.” After receiving commendations for Best Fringe Show at the 1996 Dublin
Theatre Festival and the Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival in
1997, “Disco Pigs” went on to tour extensively in Ireland, the UK, Canada
and Australia. Murphy later starred in the film version, directed by Kirsten
Sheridan.
In 2006, Murphy made his West End debut at the New Ambassador Theatre in
John Kolvenbach’s “Love Song,” directed by John Crowley. His stage
collaborations with Tony-winning director Garry Hynes include “The Country
Boy,” “Juno and the Paycock,” and “Playboy of the Western World” at the
Gaity Theatre in Dublin. He also starred as Konstantin in the Edinburgh Fest
production of “The Seagull”; as Adam in Neil LaBute’s “The Shape of Things”
at the Gate Theatre in Dublin; and as Claudio in “Much Ado About Nothing” at
Kilkenny Castle.
MARK RYLANCE (Mr. Dawson) is an award-winning actor who has been recognized
for his work on both the stage and screen over the course of his illustrious
career. Among his many honors to date, he has won an Academy Award, three
BAFTA Awards, three Tony Awards and two Olivier Awards.
He won his Oscar for his performance in Steven Spielberg’s 2015 true-life
drama “Bridge of Spies,” for which he also won a BAFTA Award and numerous
critics groups’ awards for Best Supporting Actor. He also received Golden
Globe and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award nominations for his portrayal of
Russian spy Rudolf Abel in the film.
That same year, Rylance was honored for his work on the small screen in
PBS’s acclaimed Tudor-era miniseries “Wolf Hall,” directed by Peter
Kosminsky. His portrayal of Thomas Cromwell brought him a BAFTA TV Award for
Best Actor, Limited Series or Movie, as well as Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG
Award nominations. He earlier won his first BAFTA TV Award, for Best Actor,
for his performance in the Kosminsky-directed 2005 television movie “The
Government Inspector.”
Rylance more recently reunited with Spielberg to star in the title role of
2016’s fantasy “The BFG.” He will next be seen in the director’s
much-anticipated sci-fi thriller “Ready Player One,” opening in March 2018,
and he is also set to star in Spielberg’s “The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.”
Born in England, Rylance immigrated with his family to America in 1962 at
the age of two. In 1978, he returned to England, where he trained for two
years at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The Glasgow Citizens Theatre
gave him his first professional acting job in 1980. Rylance went on to
become the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London for 10
years, from 1995 to 2005, and played a major part in creating its ongoing
success.
In 2015, he returned to the Globe Theatre as King Philippe V of Spain in
“Farinelli and the King,” written by Claire van Kampen. Starting at the Sam
Wanamaker Playhouse, the play moved to London’s West End, where it garnered
six Olivier Award nominations, including one for Rylance for Best Actor. In
December 2017, the production is coming to Broadway, where Rylance will
reprise his role.
Returning to the West End in 2016, he starred in “Nice Fish,” directed by
van Kampen. Rylance also co-wrote the play with Louis Jenkins, earning an
Olivier nomination for Best New Play. “Nice Fish” also enjoyed successful
runs in Boston and New York.
Rylance wrote his first play, “I Am Shakespeare,” in 2007. It premiered at
the Chichester Festival Theatre under the direction of Matthew Warchus and
was published in 2012 by Nick Hern Books.
In all, he has acted in more than 50 productions of plays by William
Shakespeare and his contemporaries as well as many other playwrights on the
stages of London, New York and other major cities around the world. He won
his first Olivier Award, for Best Actor, in 1994 for his work in
Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” He took home his first Best Actor
Tony Award for his performance in the 2008 revival of “Boeing-Boeing,” for
which he also won Drama Desk and Theatre World Awards and earned an Olivier
Award nomination. He later starred in Jez Butterworth’s “Jerusalem,”
initially in London and then on Broadway, winning both Tony and Olivier
Awards for his role. In 2014, he received dual Tony Award nominations, for
Best Actor in a Play for “Richard III” and Best Featured Actor in a Play for
“Twelfth Night,” winning the Tony for the latter. He has also earned Olivier
Award nominations for his work in “Twelfth Night,” “La Bête,” and “Arden of
Faversham.” The theatre companies with which Rylance has worked include the
Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre, The Bush, The Tricycle,
Shared Experience, and New York’s Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA). He has
also performed in a number of plays with his own companies, The London
Theatre of Imagination (LTI) and Phoebus Cart.
On the screen, Rylance’s additional film and television credits include “The
Gunman,” directed by Pierre Morel; “Days and Nights”; directed by Christian
Camargo and produced by Juliet Rylance; “Anonymous”; “The Other Boleyn
Girl”; “The Grass Arena”; “Intimacy”; “Angels and Insects”; “Love Lies
Bleeding”; and “Institute Benjamenta,” for the Quay brothers. He is also the
voice of Flop in the BBC’s animated TV series “Bing.”
Rylance is an honorary bencher of the Middle Temple Hall in London; trustee
of The Shakespearean Authorship Trust; an ambassador of Survival, the
movement for tribal peoples; and a patron of Peace Direct, working for
non-violent resolution of conflict.
In 2017, Rylance was knighted for services to Drama.
TOM HARDY (Farrier) received an Oscar nomination last year, for Best
Supporting Actor, for his performance in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s epic
frontier drama “The Revenant,” with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Released in 2015, “The Revenant” was only one of five feature films in which
the actor starred that year. Hardy played the title role in George Miller’s
dystopian blockbuster “Mad Max: Fury Road,” for which he won a Critics’
Choice Award for Best Actor in an Action Film. He also portrayed the
notorious identical twin gangsters Ronald and Reginald Kray, who ruled the
East End of London in the 1950s and `60s, in Brian Helgeland’s crime drama
“Legend,” for which he won a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor.
In addition, he starred in Rufus Norris’s mystery thriller “London Road,”
and “Child 44,” with Gary Oldman. As a result, the London Critics’ Circle
presented Hardy with their prestigious British Actor of the Year Award
honoring all of his performances in 2015.
“Dunkirk” marks Hardy’s third collaboration with director Christopher Nolan.
They first worked together in 2010 on the thought-provoking hit thriller
“Inception,” alongside an international cast led by DiCaprio. They reunited
on the 2012 blockbuster “The Dark Knight Rises,” in which Hardy played the
ruthless masked villain Bane, alongside Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway and
Marion Cotillard.
Hailing from Great Britain, Hardy was studying at the prestigious Drama
Centre London when he was offered his breakout role in HBO’s award-winning
World War II miniseries “Band of Brothers,” executive produced by Tom Hanks
and Steven Spielberg. His feature film debut came shortly after when he was
cast in Ridley Scott’s 2001 war drama “Black Hawk Down” followed the next
year by Stuart Baird’s sci-fi adventure “Star Trek: Nemesis.”
In 2008, Hardy garnered global attention for his captivating on-screen
transformation as a real-life, notoriously violent convict in the title role
of Nicolas Winding Refn’s drama “Bronson,” winning the British Independent
Film Award for Best Actor for his performance. The British Academy of Film
and Television Arts further recognized Hardy’s achievements by honoring him
with their Rising Star Award in 2011.
The actor’s subsequent film credits include lauded roles in Gavin O’Connor’s
boxing drama “Warrior,” with Nick Nolte and Joel Edgerton; Tomas Alfredson’s
thriller “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” with Gary Oldman, for which Hardy
earned another British Independent Film Award nomination for Best Supporting
Actor; John Hillcoat’s Depression-era crime drama “Lawless,” which premiered
at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival; Steven Knight’s thriller “Locke,” for
which he received his third British Independent Film Award nomination and
won a Los Angeles Film Critics Award, both for Best Actor; and Michaël R.
Roskam’s critically acclaimed crime drama “The Drop.”
On television, Hardy currently stars in the FX/BBC period drama series
“Taboo,” which he also co-created and executive produces. Additionally, he
has a recurring role on the BBC series “Peaky Blinders,” with Cillian
Murphy. In 2008, Hardy earned a Best Actor BAFTA TV Award nomination for his
performance in the HBO movie “Stuart: A Life Backwards,” and portrayed
Heathcliff in the 2009 ITV production of “Wuthering Heights.” His small
screen credits also include the telefilms “Oliver Twist,” “A for Andromeda,”
“Sweeney Todd,” “Gideon’s Daughter,” and “Colditz,” as well as the BBC
miniseries “The Virgin Queen.”
On stage, Hardy has starred in numerous plays in London’s West End,
including “Blood” and “In Arabia We’d All Be Kings,” winning the Outstanding
Newcomer Award at the 2003 Evening Standard Theatre Awards for his work in
both productions and an Olivier Award nomination for the latter. In 2005,
Hardy starred in the London premiere of Brett C. Leonard’s “Roger and
Vanessa.” His stage work also includes Rufus Norris’s adaptation of “Festen,”
at the Almeida; “The Modernists,” at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre; “The Man
of Mode,” for the National Theatre; and the 2010 world premiere of Leonard’s
“The Long Red Road,” directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman at Chicago’s Goodman
Theatre.
In addition to performing, Hardy is also the Founder and CEO of UK
production company Hardy Son & Baker (HSB), which he formed in 2012 with
partner Dean Baker. HSB most recently partnered with Ridley Scott’s Scott
Free Productions to produce the drama series “Taboo,” which debuted earlier
this year on the BBC in the U.K. and FX in the U.S. The company’s feature
projects in development include the highly anticipated screen adaptation of
the comic series “100 Bullets”; an untitled Shackleton project, based on the
renowned British explorer Ernest Shackleton who led multiple expeditions to
the Antarctic; and an untitled Don McCullin project, based on the life of
the legendary British war photographer. On the television front, HSB has
several new scripted series for NBCUniversal International in development,
including screen adaptations of Adam Hamdy’s crime thriller Pendulum, as
well as Warren Ellis and Jason Howard’s science fiction graphic novel series
Trees.
Hardy also serves as an Ambassador for The Prince's Trust, the Royal Marines
Charitable Trust Fund (RMCTF), and Help for Heroes.
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ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
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"Dunkirk" on the DP70 at the Rigoletto, Stockholm, Sweden. Image:
Matts Kullander
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN (Director/Writer/Producer)
is an award-winning filmmaker who has been honored for his work as a
director, writer and producer on a wide range of films. Nolan and his wife
and producing partner, Emma Thomas, also helm their own production company,
Syncopy.
Born in London, Nolan began making movies at an early age with his father’s
Super-8mm camera. While studying English Literature at University College
London (UCL), he shot 16mm films at UCL’s film society, where he learned the
guerrilla film techniques he would later use to make his first feature,
“Following.” The noir thriller was recognized at a number of international
film festivals prior to its theatrical release.
Nolan first gained international attention with the 2000 independent feature
“Memento,” which he directed from his own screenplay, based on a short story
by Jonathan Nolan. Starring Guy Pearce, the film brought Nolan numerous
honors, including Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best
Original Screenplay; Independent Spirit Awards for Best Director and Best
Screenplay; and a DGA Award nomination.
He subsequently directed the critically acclaimed psychological thriller
“Insomnia,” starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank; and
directed, co-wrote and produced the mystery thriller “The Prestige,”
starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman.
Nolan went on to write, direct and produce the blockbuster “The Dark Knight”
trilogy, beginning in 2005 with “Batman Begins,” starring Christian Bale in
the title role. Three years later, the second film in the trilogy, “The Dark
Knight,” was released to worldwide acclaim and went on to gross more than
one billion dollars at the global box office. Nolan was nominated for
Directors Guild of America (DGA), Writers Guild of America (WGA) and
Producers Guild of America (PGA) Awards for his work on the film, which also
received eight Oscar nominations. Bringing the story to a close, 2012’s “The
Dark Knight Rises” also earned more than one billion dollars worldwide. Also
within the DC universe, Nolan served as a producer on the Superman film
series reboot “Man of Steel,” directed by Zack Snyder, and released in 2013.
In 2010, Nolan captivated both critics and audiences with the sci-fi
thriller “Inception,” which he directed and produced from his own original
screenplay. The thought-provoking drama was a worldwide hit, earning more
than $800 million dollars and becoming one of the most talked-about films of
the year. Among its many honors, “Inception” won four Academy Awards and
received four more Oscar nominations, including two for Nolan, for Best
Picture and Best Screenplay. Nolan was also recognized by his peers with DGA
Award and PGA Award nominations, and won a WGA Award for Best Original
Screenplay.
Nolan more recently wrote, directed and produced the 2014 science fiction
dramatic thriller “Interstellar,” starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne
Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, John Lithgow, Casey Affleck and Michael Caine.
The widely praised film earned five Academy Award nominations and four BAFTA
Award nominations, winning both the Oscar and BAFTA Award for Best Visual
Effects.
EMMA THOMAS (Producer) has produced a wide range of successful and
critically acclaimed films. Together with her husband, Christopher Nolan,
she also heads up their production company, Syncopy.
She received an Oscar nomination as a producer on Nolan’s widely acclaimed
2010 sci-fi thriller “Inception,” with an international ensemble cast,
including Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy,
Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe and Michael Caine. The film earned more than
$800 million dollars worldwide and also garnered numerous honors, including
four Academy Awards and four more nominations, as well as four Golden Globe
nominations and nine BAFTA Award nominations, all including Best Picture.
Thomas also received a Producers Guild of America (PGA) Award nomination.
Thomas also produced Nolan’s blockbuster “The Dark Knight” trilogy, which
earned almost $2.5 billion combined at the global box office. The trilogy
began with the 2005 hit “Batman Begins,” starring Christian Bale as Bruce
Wayne/Batman. In 2008, “The Dark Knight” shattered box office records and
received eight Academy Award nominations, winning four, and nine BAFTA Award
nominations, among other honors. Thomas was honored with her first PGA Award
nomination for her producing work on the film. She completed work on the
trilogy in 2012 with “The Dark Knight Rises.”
She most recently produced Nolan’s science fiction action adventure
“Interstellar,” starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, which took
in more than $675 million worldwide. The film received five Oscar
nominations, winning one. Thomas also served as a producer on Zack Snyder’s
2013 hit “Man of Steel.”
Thomas studied at the prestigious University College London before beginning
her career at Working Title Films in physical production. In 1996, she
produced the independent feature “Following.” Shot on a shoestring budget
and on weekends over the course of a year, the noir thriller captured the
art of guerilla filmmaking at its best. Prior to its release, the film went
on to gain recognition at film festivals around the world and received
international distribution.
Thomas then served as an associate producer on the internationally acclaimed
independent film “Memento.” The film went on to win a number of awards,
including an Independent Spirit Award, a British Independent Film Award, and
several critics groups’ awards for Best Film. On the heels of this success,
Thomas co-produced her first major studio release, the hit psychological
thriller “Insomnia,” starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank.
Thomas also produced “The Prestige,” starring Christian Bale and Hugh
Jackman as two magicians whose jealous obsessions lead to tragedy and
murder. The Nolan-directed film earned two Academy Award nominations, for
Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.
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70mm print for Rigoletto, Stockholm, Sweden. Image: Matts Kullander
JAKE MYERS (Executive Producer) previously collaborated with Christopher
Nolan as an executive producer on the hit science fiction thriller
“Interstellar.” He is currently producing “M:I 6 – Mission Impossible,” the
sixth film in the blockbuster franchise, being directed by Christopher
McQuarrie and starring Tom Cruise. He previously served as an executive
producer on “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” and “Jack Reacher,” both
starring Cruise under McQuarrie’s direction.
Myers’s prior films as an executive producer include “RED” and its sequel,
“RED 2”; “Man on a Ledge”; Allen Coulter’s “Hollywoodland,” starring Ben
Affleck and Adrien Brody; and Mikael Håfström’s “1408.” He also produced
Håfström’s “Shanghai.” In addition, Myers was a co-producer on Terry
Gilliam’s “The Brothers Grimm,” as well as “Brooklyn Babylon” and “Jump
Tomorrow.”
His credits as a production executive at Miramax Films and Dimension Films
include “The Adventures of Sharkboy & Lavagirl 3-D,” “Derailed,” “The
Prophecy: Uprising,” “Ella Enchanted” and “Chicago.”
HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA (Director of Photography) previously collaborated with
director Christopher Nolan on the science fiction action adventure
“Interstellar,” for which he received a BAFTA Award nomination and was
recognized by a number of critics organizations.
Born in Sweden, van Hoytema began his career studying at the esteemed
National Film School in Lodz, Poland. He went on to shoot several films,
commercials, documentaries and TV series all over Europe, including Poland,
Sweden, Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom.
In 2008, van Hoytema’s cinematography for Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s
critical masterpiece “Let the Right One In” earned him several international
awards and caught the attention of other filmmakers. David O. Russell hired
van Hoytema to lens his 2010 film “The Fighter.” The following year, van
Hoytema re-teamed with Alfredson on “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” for which
he was nominated for both the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and
BAFTA Awards.
Van Hoytema then shot Spike Jonze’s widely acclaimed virtual love story
“Her” in 2013. He more recently served as the cinematographer on the 2015
Bond actioner “Spectre,” for director Sam Mendes.
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NATHAN CROWLEY (Production Designer) has earned three Academy Award
nominations for his work on Christopher Nolan films. He received his first
Oscar nod for the period drama “The Prestige,” followed by nominations for
the blockbuster “The Dark Knight” and “Interstellar.” He has also received
three BAFTA Award nominations, for “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight” and
“Interstellar.” In addition, Crowley garnered an Art Directors Guild (ADG)
Award for “The Dark Knight,” as well as nominations for “The Dark Knight
Rises,” “Batman Begins” and “The Prestige.” He first teamed with Nolan on
the director’s crime thriller “Insomnia.”
Crowley received another ADG Award nomination for his design work on Michael
Mann’s “Public Enemies.” His additional film credits include the sci-fi
adventure “John Carter”; the romantic drama “The Lake House”; the biopic
“Veronica Guerin,” directed by Joel Schumacher; the war drama “Behind Enemy
Lines”; and Barry Levinson’s Ireland-set comedy “An Everlasting Piece.”
He previously served as an art director on such films as “Mission:
Impossible II,” directed by John Woo; Richard Donner’s “Assassins”; Alan J.
Pakula’s “The Devil’s Own”; and “Braveheart,” directed by and starring Mel
Gibson.
In addition to his film work, Crowley recently designed the pilot episode
and served as the series concept production designer for HBO’s hit series “Westworld,”
created for television by Jonathan Nolan. Earlier this year, Crowley won an
ADG Award for his work on the show.
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LEE SMITH (Editor) earned Academy Award, BAFTA Award and Eddie Award
nominations for his work on Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” and a
BAFTA Award nomination for his work on Nolan’s “Inception.” He has also
collaborated with Nolan on “Interstellar, “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Batman
Begins” and “The Prestige.”
Smith has also enjoyed a long association with director Peter Weir, earning
an Academy Award nomination for his editing work on Weir’s “Master and
Commander: The Far Side of the World,” for which he also received an Eddie
Award nomination. Smith most recently reunited with Weir for the fact-based
drama “The Way Back.” Smith had earlier served as editor and sound designer
on Weir’s “The Truman Show,” “Fearless” and “Green Card”; an additional
editor on “Dead Poets Society”; and an associate editor and sound designer
on “The Year of Living Dangerously,” which began their collaboration.
Hailing from Australia, Smith won an Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award
for Best Editing on Gregor Jordan’s “Two Hands,” on which he was also the
sound designer. As a sound designer, he also won an AFI Award and earned a
BAFTA Award nomination for his work on Jane Campion’s “The Piano,” and won
an AFI Award for Phillip Noyce’s “Dead Calm.”
Smith’s recent credits as an editor also include the Bond film “Spectre,”
for director Sam Mendes; Gavin Hood’s “Ender’s Game”; Neill Blomkamp’s
“Elysium”; and Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class.” He also served as the
editor on such films as “Black and White,” “Buffalo Soldiers,” “Risk,”
“Joey,” “RoboCop 2,” “Communion” and “Howling III.”
JEFFREY KURLAND (Costume Designer) is currently working on Christopher
McQuarrie’s actioner “M:I6 – Mission Impossible,” the sixth installment in
the blockbuster franchise, starring Tom Cruise.
Kurland has devoted much of his career to designing the costumes for Woody
Allen films. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design
for the director’s “Bullets Over Broadway,” and won a BAFTA Award for his
work on “Radio Days.” His collaborations with Allen also include “Everyone
Says I Love You,” “Mighty Aphrodite,” “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” “Husbands
and Wives,” “Shadows and Fog,” “Alice,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “New York
Stories,” “Another Woman,” “September,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “The
Purple Rose of Cairo” and “Broadway Danny Rose.”
Kurland previously worked with Christopher Nolan on the 2010 worldwide hit
“Inception,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio. His other recent credits include
“The Dictator,” starring Sacha Baron Cohen; Richard LaGravenese’s “Beautiful
Creatures”; Brad Bird’s “Tomorrowland,” starring George Clooney; and Paul
Feig’s reboot of “Ghostbusters,” starring Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon,
Kristen Wiig and Leslie Jones.
In addition, Kurland served as the costume designer on F. Gary Gray’s crime
thriller “Law Abiding Citizen,” starring Jamie Foxx; the adventure “Nim’s
Island,” starring Jodie Foster and Abigail Breslin; Andrew Fleming’s mystery
adventure “Nancy Drew,” starring Emma Roberts in the title role; Stephen
Hopkins’ supernatural thriller “The Reaping”; Michael Mann’s dramatic
thriller “Collateral,” starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx; Joe Johnston’s
action adventure “Hidalgo”; and the thriller “Criminal,” produced by Steven
Soderbergh. He also worked with Soderbergh as the costume designer on the
hit films “Ocean’s Eleven,” featuring an all-star cast, and “Erin Brockovich,”
starring Julia Roberts, for which he earned a Costume Designers Guild Award.
His earlier credits include Milos Forman’s “Man on the Moon,” Neil Jordan’s
“In Dreams,” Richard LaGravenese’s “Living Out Loud,” P.J. Hogan’s “My Best
Friend’s Wedding,” and the Nora Ephron films “This Is My Life” and “Mixed
Nuts.”
Kurland has served as governor on the board of the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences for 12 years, and as the Academy’s first Vice President
for the last years.
HANS ZIMMER (Composer) has scored more than 120 films, which, combined, have
grossed more than 24 billion dollars at the worldwide box office. He has
been honored with an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, three Grammys, an
American Music Award, and a Tony Award. His most recent Academy Award
nomination, for Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” marks his 10th career
Oscar nomination. In 2003, ASCAP presented him with the prestigious Henry
Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement for his impressive and influential
body of work. He also received his Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in
2010 and, in 2014, was honored with the Zurich Film Festival Lifetime
Achievement Award.
In 2014, Zimmer completed his first concerts in the UK, “Hans Zimmer
Revealed,” at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, and concluded his first
ever European tour, “Hans Zimmer Live,” in 2016. He recently completed the
European leg of his Hans Zimmer Live 2017 tour and is beginning the U.S.
portion of the tour, which comes after his wildly successful and
well-reviewed performances at Coachella in April.
Zimmer’s other recent projects include BBC’s “Planet Earth II”; Ron Howard’s
“Genius,” on National Geographic, with Lorne Balfe; the main title music for
Netflix’s “The Crown”; the animated “The Boss Baby”; the Oscar-nominated
“Hidden Figures,” with Pharrell Williams and Ben Wallfisch; the Ron
Howard-directed features “Inferno” and “Rush”; Zack Snyder’s “Batman v
Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Man of Steel”; Mark Osborne’s “The Little
Prince”; Peter Sollet’s “Freeheld”; Simon Curtis’s “Woman in Gold”; Marc
Webb’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”; Steve McQueen’s Oscar-winning “12 Years a
Slave”; the History Channel miniseries “The Bible”; the Christopher
Nolan-directed films “Inception” and “The Dark Knight” trilogy; and Guy
Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” films. Some of Zimmer’s other notable works
include his scores for “Rain Man,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Thelma & Louise,”
“Crimson Tide,” “The Thin Red Line,” “Gladiator,” “Mission: Impossible II,”
“Hannibal,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Tears of the Sun,” “Spanglish,” the “Pirates of
the Caribbean” franchise, the “Kung Fu Panda” and “Madagascar” animated
films, “The Da Vinci Code,” “Frost/Nixon,” and “The Lion King,” for which he
won the Academy Award.
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Go: back - top - back issues - news index Updated
28-07-24 |
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