Go Behind the Scenes of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk’ in a Great 30-Min Featurette

Warner Bros. has released a fantastic 30-minute featurette for Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed war feature, Dunkirk, on the road to the Academy Awards.

Nolan and his team pulled out all the stops to recreate the battle of Dunkrirk, changing up elements of the filmmaking game in the process; from Nolan’s time-jumping screenplay, to the use of IMAX cameras, to driving the narrative with Hans Zimmer’s score and tempo, to how they went about filming as much ‘in camera’ as possible. It’s grand stuff. Take a look at the great making of video below, which touches on a lot of what went into the creation of one of 2017’s best films.

The film is now up for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Score (Hans Zimmer), Editing (Lee Smith) and Cinematography (Hoyte Van Hoytema). Importantly, Dunkirk has given Nolan his first (!) Oscar nomination for Best Director.

Official synopsis for Dunkirk:

Nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, Dunkirk is Christopher Nolan’s sweeping, emotional epic. 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 and home almost within sight, 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 troops below. Meanwhile, hundreds of small boats manned by both civilians and military mount a desperate rescue effort, risking their lives in a race against time to save even a fraction of their army. When 400,000 men couldn’t get home, home came for them.