According to Sir Kenneth Branagh, about thirty Dunkirk survivors, then in their mid-nineties, attended the premiere in London, England. When asked about the film, they felt it accurately reflected the events but that the score was louder than the actual bombardment, a comment that greatly amused writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan.
The clock in the score does not stop for the entire film until Alex and Tommy are sitting safely on the train.
In the scene where the Spitfire crashes into the English Channel, an IMAX camera was mounted in the cockpit to film Collins (Jack Lowden) trying to get out. During shooting, however, the plane, with the camera still inside, sank faster than expected. It took so long to recover the plane that the IMAX camera housing filled with water, potentially damaging the expensive camera and the film inside it. Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema used an old film technique to keep the film wet and sent it back to Los Angeles to be processed before it dried. A summary of that scene appears in the film.
After first-hand accounts of the Dunkirk evacuation revealed how young and inexperienced the soldiers were, writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan decided to cast young, unknown actors for the beach setting.
Writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan, along with his wife, producer Dame Emma Thomas, and a friend, crossed by boat from England to Dunkirk, just as civilians did during the original evacuation. Nolan said the journey took 19 hours due to sea conditions.
In the final part of the film, it is noted that twelve original small boats that took part in the Dunkirk evacuation appear in the film, re-enacting their presence in 1940.
Dawson (Sir Mark Rylance) is based on Charles Lightoller, second officer of the RMS Titanic, who took his yacht "Sundowner" to Dunkirk at the age of 66. Like Lightoller, Dawson refuses to let the Navy crew his boat — "If anyone takes her, it will be me" — and takes one of his sons with him. Like Lightoller, Dawson had lost the son who had taught him in the Royal Air Force how to evade air attacks (Brian was shot down in a Wellington bomber on the second day of the war). Also like Lightoller, he had the boat so full (four men were standing in the bathtub) that the landing officer could not believe there were more than 55 men aboard (Lightoller managed to fit more than 130 men onto the "Sundowner").
It is told from three perspectives: with the infantry on the beach (including Fionn Whitehead and Harry Styles), the Navy evacuation (featuring Cillian Murphy and Sir Mark Rylance, showing how civilians came to the rescue), and then in the air (with Tom Hardy taking part in the dogfight). Speaking to Premiere Magazine about the narrative structure, Sir Christopher Nolan said: "For the soldiers involved in the conflict, events took place in different temporalities. On land, some were stranded on the beach for a week. At sea, events lasted at most a day; if you were flying to Dunkirk, British Spitfires carried an hour's worth of fuel. To interweave these different versions of history, it was necessary to interweave the temporal layers. Even if the story is very simple, the complex structure stems from this. Don't try this at the studio; this will be my most experimental film."
The scene in which Farrier's (Tom Hardy's) Spitfire lands on the Dunkirk beach was real, shot on location with a real Spitfire in flight, and it was the first time a plane had landed on that beach since 1940. After the scene was completed, however, the Spitfire became stuck in the sand. A frantic rush followed to get the valuable Spitfire off the beach before the incoming tide could damage it.
While researching the Dunkirk story, "History vs. Hollywood" discovered that the character Farrier is not directly based on a real person, but that his experience closely resembles that of New Zealand Spitfire pilot Alan Christopher "Al" Deere. Farrier's fictional experience is similar as well. After shooting down several German aircraft, he had to make a forced landing east of Dunkirk, possibly on the Belgian coast. Unlike Deere, Farrier is captured in the closing shots. Deere had returned to England after punching in the face a Navy officer who would not let him board a ship. During his combat career, Al was shot down nine times, survived every incident, and recounted his experiences in his autobiography "Nine Lives".
The ticking sounds that serve as a key theme in the score were recorded by composer Hans Zimmer from one of Sir Christopher Nolan's own pocket watches. He then fed the sounds into synthesizers and altered them in various ways for the score.
The film was shot on the real beach at Dunkirk where the evacuation took place. While researching the film, Christopher Nolan found a button from a British military uniform in the sand.
Although the Germans fire on and bomb the Allied forces throughout the film, no German soldier is seen until the final shots of the film; even then they are out of focus and in shadow.
Sir Christopher Nolan focused on every aspect of "realism." For most of the cockpit shots, he had a two-seat aircraft modified so that the front canopy and cockpit looked like a real Spitfire, but the flight controls did not work and the real pilot flew the plane from the rear cockpit, so that the actor could play the pilot while the aircraft was actually flying. He also mounted forward- and rear-facing cameras on a restored Spitfire. He also had cameramen floating in the water alongside the actors.
In this film, many soldiers cursed the Royal Air Force for not protecting them from Luftwaffe bombers. What is never mentioned is that the Royal Air Force was already attacking the bombers sent to bomb the soldiers on the beaches, and that the only bombers that got through were those that could get past the fighters. These dogfights took place further inland from Dunkirk, so the soldiers on the beaches did not see many fighters during the evacuation, which is why they thought the Royal Air Force had abandoned them.
The aircraft bombing the beach were Junkers Ju-87 Sturzkampfflugzeug "Stuka" dive bombers, and the distinctive sound they made came not from their engine or propeller but from sirens mounted on the leading edges of their fixed main landing gear, called the Jericho Trompete ("Jericho trumpet"), which terrorized ground troops and became a propaganda tool that trumpeted German air power during World War II. Although the Stukas were the only aircraft equipped with such a siren system, this sound became the characteristic sound of diving and attacking aircraft.
Sir Christopher Nolan spoke about the significance of the Battle of Dunkirk: "It is a very important moment in the history of World War II. If this evacuation had not succeeded, Great Britain would have been forced to surrender and the whole world would have been lost or would have met a different fate. The Germans would undoubtedly have conquered Europe, and the US would not have re-entered the war. This is a real turning point in the war and in world history." And the success of the evacuation allowed (Sir Winston Churchill) to impose the idea of a moral victory, which in turn allowed him to mobilize his troops like civilians and to impose a spirit of resistance when the logic of the process should have been surrender.
The title "Dunkirk" is divided into a three-part color scheme: sky blue, navy blue and white; it refers to the tripartite graphic of air, sea and land.
When Farrier (Tom Hardy) lands his Spitfire on the coast of Dunkirk, the aircraft's pilot is actually flown by American billionaire Dan Friedkin, who lent the plane to this film from his personal collection.
Charles Herbert Lightoller, the most senior surviving officer of the RMS Titanic, took part in the Dunkirk evacuation with his private motor yacht "The Sundowner". He was accompanied by his son Roger and an 18-year-old sea scout named Gerald Ashcroft. The craft is preserved by the Ramsgate Maritime Museum in England.
The city of Dunkirk wanted some parts of the film to be shot in the original setting. The city administration created a film department to encourage and organize film shoots in the city. In the first eighteen months, they received two hundred and seven days of shooting from different projects.
For the film's sound design, Sir Christopher Nolan used a Shepard tone, in which rising notes are skillfully looped to give the impression of an endless rise on screen. He also wanted to write the screenplay according to this principle, so that the audience could bring the three stories together and their constant anxiety and tension would increase. That is, while one story reaches its peak, another is still being built and the third is entering its final stage.
The production had only a forty-five-minute window to get the shot of Farrier's plane landing on the coast of Dunkirk, because the incoming tide would make the sand too unstable for a plane to land on.
More than 50 boats were used at sea and more than 10 on the beach in this film.
When asked why he chose Harry Styles for this film, writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan said: "I auditioned literally thousands of young men with different combinations of young men, and he had it."
Writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan, who continues to advocate for film over digital formats, chose to shoot this film with a combination of 65/70mm IMAX film and Super Panavision 65mm film to achieve the maximum possible image quality. After The Master (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015), this film was the third major film of the 2010s to be shot and shown in cinemas in 70 mm. Months after Dunkirk's premiere, it emerged that Sir Kenneth Branagh's own film Murder on the Orient Express (2017) was also shot in 65 mm and received a 70 mm release, albeit a limited one compared to the other three films.
"The Hollywood Reporter" stated that Sir Christopher Nolan received 20 million dollars, corresponding to 20% of the box office gross, which, along with Peter Jackson, who received the same money for King Kong (2005), was the biggest deal for any director. However, "Vanity Fair" reported that Nolan agreed to take a low upfront salary in exchange for a large back-end percentage.
According to Sir Christopher Nolan, the original ending was supposed to be the shot of the Spitfire burning on the beach. Nolan changed his mind after watching Fionn Whitehead's (Tommy) daily newspapers. In an interview with his brother Jonathan, he said, "In the end, (Fionn) did it and I don't even know what he did, but you want to end this silent moment with him, with no one paying attention to him and Alex eating and drinking what the girls are handing out of the window. It brings you back to this personal moment. He is trying to process the words he has just read from this very effective politician and trying to reconcile it with himself. I hope the audience will try to do the same thing through his eyes. So we come back to something very small."
Sir Winston Churchill had been Britain's prime minister for only 16 days when the evacuation began. On 26 May 1940, after Lord Halifax suggested using the still-neutral Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to broker a negotiated end to the war, Churchill replied: "I would like to get out of our present difficulties on such terms, provided we retained the essentials and the elements of our vital strength, even at the cost of some territory." He said that "if we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta, Gibraltar and some African colonies, he would jump at it. But the only safe way was to convince Hitler he couldn't beat us."
This is the third film written entirely by Sir Christopher Nolan himself. The others were Follow (1998) and Inception (2010). Memento (2000) was based on a short story by his brother Jonathan Nolan. The Dark Knight (2008), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Interstellar (2014) were all co-written by Jonathan Nolan. Batman Begins (2005) was co-written by David S. Goyer. Nolan's only film not listed in the credits is Insomnia (2002), for which Nolan wrote the final shooting script.
To create the illusion of a great many men during the evacuation, large numbers of cardboard cut-out soldiers and a thousand extras were placed.
In an interview, Sir Christopher Nolan compared the casting of musician Harry Styles to the selection of Heath Ledger for the role of the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008), because people had underestimated him too.
Towards the end of the film, a fuel-less Spitfire is seen shooting down a Stuka dive bomber. This is historically accurate. Stukas were known to be easy targets for fighter aircraft (especially while preparing to dive), and a significant portion of them were shot down in the subsequent Battle of Britain.
Sir Kenneth Branagh played Royal Navy Commander Bolton, the pier master at Dunkirk. Writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan explained that Bolton's character is a composite of several officers who performed heroically during the evacuation, but mostly of Commander James Campbell Clouston. Clouston was born on 31 August 1900 in Montreal, Québec, and joined the Royal Navy in the middle of the First World War. The Royal Canadian Navy was a fledgling service at the time, and it was not unusual for young Canadians who wanted to serve at sea to join the Royal Navy. Clouston rose through the ranks as he distinguished himself, earning the title of gunnery specialist, considered the navy's finest player. In 1937, he became captain of the destroyer HMS Isis, which was undergoing repairs in late May 1940 when Dunkirk broke down. He immediately volunteered to help and was appointed pier captain at the besieged port. By all accounts, he served extraordinarily, working day and night under the most difficult conditions to evacuate as many soldiers as possible. He stayed there until he could no longer be evacuated, but while returning to Britain, he was killed in the English Channel when the ship he was on was attacked by German aircraft. In July 1940, he was awarded a Mention in Despatches, the highest gallantry award after the Victoria Cross.
American billionaire Dan Friedkin, a passionate collector of vintage military aviation, allowed the production to use two Mk1 Spitfires from his collection for this film. Each of the aircraft is worth five million dollars, and his collection is so large that the only person who owns more Spitfires than him is the Queen.
The idea for this film first came to Sir Christopher Nolan in 1992 while sailing to Dunkirk with his girlfriend (later his wife) Dame Emma Thomas.
If you look at the location on Google Maps (Street View), you can see that they built the first side road on Dunkirk beach that Tommy runs along to reach the beach. Barriers with "film" signs added can be seen. When you zoom in, you can see that most of the background details are the same as in this film. Only the road signs were removed; the 1920s-style glass globe light was there in the original. 15 Digue de Mer 59240 Dunkerque France.
Real Dunkirk War veterans Robert Halliday (spent six days on the beach, saved many lives), Arthur Taylor (survived Dunkirk and stormed the Normandy beach on D-Day) and Vic Viner (spent six days on a Navy ship, evacuating soldiers) were consulted during the writing and production of this film.
Sir Christopher Nolan cited silent films such as Greed (1924), Intolerance (1916) and Sunrise (1927) as inspiration for this film's crowd scenes: "I spent a lot of time studying silent films for the crowd scenes. The way the extras move, the way they develop, how the space is staged and how the cameras capture it, the images used." Nolan also studied The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Pickpocket (1959), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and The Wages of Fear (1953) to examine the process of creating tension in detail.
Mr Dawson's boat flies a blue flag (because he was a member of a yacht club and/or was retired from the Royal Navy); most of the other boats fly the red ensign, indicating a merchant ship.
Much of this film focuses on survival rather than heroism, but at the point where the small boats approaching Dunkirk are first seen, composer Hans Zimmer quotes the main melody of "Nimrod," the ninth variation of Sir Edward Elgar's popular "Enigma Variations." The same piece of music also featured at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, alongside Sir Kenneth Branagh as he delivered lines from William Shakespeare's "The Tempest."
As the voice of the Royal Air Force flight leader. This is the seventh collaboration between Sir Christopher Nolan and Caine, after Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Interstellar (2014). Caine had previously played an RAF pilot in Battle of Britain (1969).
It was initially announced that the German tanks had been halted because "why waste precious tanks when they can pick us off from the air." In reality, the tanks urgently needed maintenance and fuel, and were also waiting for the slower-moving German infantry and the other reinforcements kilometres, sometimes dozens of miles, behind them.
Until the Fall of Singapore in 1942, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk was regarded as the worst defeat in British history.
It is the first Sir Christopher Nolan film based on historical events. All of his other films were either original screenplays, remakes, novel/short story adaptations or comic book adaptations.
To imitate the effect of a military uniform that had been visibly worn and used, the costume designers poured water over the woollen garments, dried them immediately with a torch and then brushed them with a brush. This was done repeatedly to achieve the desired effect.
The hospital ship that is initially prominently visible was portrayed by M/S Rogaland, a 1929 Norwegian passenger ship that entered service in World War II and was sunk in 1944. It was later enlarged and rebuilt and still regularly serves as a passenger ship in Stavanger, Norway.
It was made from a 76-page screenplay. In fact, Sir Christopher Nolan's aim was to make an improvised film.
According to writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan, the tension he felt while watching Saving Private Ryan (1998) was not the tension he wanted in this film.
At 1 hour 46 minutes, this is Sir Christopher Nolan's shortest film since his first feature, Following (1998). It is also more than an hour shorter than his previous film, Interstellar (2014).
The voice of Fortis Leader (the first Spitfire to be shot down) is that of Sir Michael Caine, in a tribute to his role as Squadron Leader Canfield in the 1969 film "Battle of Britain."
The soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk made up only one tenth of the British armed forces in 1940.
It marks the fifth collaboration between Cillian Murphy and Sir Christopher Nolan.
In several shots, harbour cranes as well as houses that do not look very old are clearly visible. This is in fact historically accurate. At the time, Dunkirk had dock cranes, and the houses along the shore looked more like three- or four-storey "modernized" apartment blocks.
This film had the widest release in the 70 mm widescreen format in 25 years, since Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992). The 70 mm prints were shown in 125 cinemas, beating the previous record of 100 cinemas held by Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (2015).
The Halt Order was accepted by Army Group A commander Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and Fourth Army commander General Günther von Kluge, at the request of tank unit commander General Paul von Kleist, who had lost half of his armoured forces and needed time to regroup. After the war, von Rundstedt tried to shift responsibility for the Halt Order onto Adolf Hitler. Von Rundstedt's biographer acknowledged that this "does not represent the whole truth," because the real driving force behind a pause had come from Kleist and von Rundstedt.
The production used twenty of the ships that took part in the real-life evacuation.
This film marked the sixth collaboration between writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan and composer Hans Zimmer. They had previously worked together on The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). Zimmer received Oscar nominations for Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014) and this film.
The production was given twelve weeks to rebuild "The Mole" (the white walkway extending out into the ocean where all the soldiers stand in the open); they built it on top of the real monument at the Dunkirk battlefield and from the original plans of the original "Mole." It was also built to be coded with the local Harbour Authority.
The film debuts Fionn Whitehead (Tommy) and Harry Styles (Alex).
The extensive handheld IMAX camera work was carried out by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who often had to manage a rig weighing up to 27 kilograms when fully loaded. Because of the weight of its upper section, Ryan Monro was able to steady the unit by physically holding it during complex shots.
Nearly a thousand extras were used.
Two historic fishing boats were used as background dressing: UK 12 and UK 114. However, "UK" does not mean "United Kingdom." It is the Dutch port code for Urk, where most of the filming outside Dunkirk beach and Weymouth harbour took place.
Urk, a small fishing town in the Netherlands, was used as an operations base for filming on the IJsselmeer. Ships registered to the main port of Urk carry the 'United Kingdom' registration and a number; two of them can be seen in several scenes. Urk is pronounced exactly like the second part of the film's title: dunkURK. When the film came out, everyone in the town wanted to see it, but since Urk had no cinema of its own, a cinema truck (a mobile cinema with several seats) was set up so that some people in the town could watch the film in their own neighbourhoods.
When soldiers are seen arriving at Woking railway station at the end of the film, the station in question is actually Swanage railway station in Dorset. The station, including all its signage, was extensively redressed for filming in July 2016. Consistent with Christopher Nolan telling as much of the story as possible from the characters' point of view, the station is only seen through train windows, so almost none of the redressing work done by the crew appears in the final cut.
It was shot mostly in France, under the working title "Bodega Bay," named after the California village where Alfred Hitchcock shot The Birds (1963).
Some of the aircraft seen in this film are actually large (two-metre-long) radio-controlled scale models. The production built and used forty accurately scaled models of the Junkers Ju-87 "StuKa" and Messerschmitt 109s, particularly for the low-flying and attack scenes.
The film was criticised for not showing Indian soldiers. During the evacuation, four companies of unarmed mule handlers of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps were present at Dunkirk. These numbered fewer than a thousand out of nearly half a million men. Three were evacuated and one was taken prisoner by the Germans. In September 1939, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had called on all Indian people not to support the British war effort. He later launched the Quit India campaign in 1942, which was harshly suppressed by the British.
On a podcast, Quentin Tarantino described it as his 2nd favourite film of the decade.
Despite receiving the highest billing, Tom Hardy's face is visible for only a few minutes. He spends most of the film flying and fighting in his Spitfire behind his oxygen mask and goggles.
The warships used in this film include: the French T-47-class destroyer Maillé-Brézé (D627), standing in for the British V-class destroyers H. M. S. Vivacious (D36) and H. M. S. Defeat (D54). The Dutch Dokkum-class minesweepers H. N. L. M. S. Naaldwijk (M/PW809) and H. N. L. M. S. Sittard (M830), with Naaldwijk standing in for the British minesweeper H. M. S. Britomart (J22) and Sittard simultaneously standing in for the British H-class destroyer H. M. S. Havant (H32) and the British J-class destroyer H. M. S. Jaguar (F34). The British Harbour Defence Motor Launch H. M. S. Medusa (ML1387). The US Navy Rhine patrol boat U. S. N. P22. The Dutch multi-purpose vessel M. L. V. Castor (A810), standing in for the British destroyer H. M. S. Salamander (H11). The British Motor Torpedo Boat MTB102 (which was present at the real Dunkirk evacuation and became the smallest vessel to serve as a flagship in the Royal Navy when Admiral Frederic Wake-Walker transferred to it after his previous flagship, the destroyer H. M. S. Keith (D06), was disabled).
This is the third collaboration between Tom Hardy and Sir Christopher Nolan, after Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
Composer Hans Zimmer initially wrote the film's score as a single one-hour-forty-minute piece, something that had never been done before. It was later split into several different pieces for practical reasons, but the ticking-clock theme is the element that binds all the pieces together as one.
The last surviving one of the many destroyers present at Operation Dynamo is the Polish ORP "Blyskawica," a Grom-class destroyer. During Dynamo the ship was under Royal Navy control, although its crew was Polish. Blyskawica served with distinction in the post-war period and was decommissioned in 1976 after nearly forty years of service. It also holds the distinction of being the oldest preserved destroyer in the world and is currently moored in Gdynia, Poland.
This was cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema's second collaboration with writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan. The previous film was Interstellar (2014).
Among the British infantry, only Tommy and a few soldiers firing at German aircraft are shown with rifles. In both cases they hit nothing.
A five-minute IMAX prologue for this film played ahead of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) and Kong: Skull Island (2017). This is the third time a Sir Christopher Nolan film has had a prologue released six months before the film. The other two were the IMAX prologue for The Dark Knight (2008), which played ahead of I Am Legend (2007), and the IMAX prologue for The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which played ahead of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011).
Critics complained that the film ignored the French Army, which held back German divisions near the city of Lille during the evacuation.
Will Attenborough's grandfather, Sir Richard Attenborough, had appeared in Dunkirk (1958), an earlier version of this historical event.
Of the more than forty thousand British soldiers captured while fighting the rearguard, more than ten thousand were Scottish. However, in this adaptation there is only one notable reference to the 51st Highlanders.
This is the first film shot in IMAX to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
Some of the real boats from the Battle of Dunkirk used in this film are Nyula, Hilfranor, Elvyn, Endeavour, Mary Jane, Caronia, New Britannic and Princess Elizabeth.
Toward the end of this film, composer Hans Zimmer wrote a long and extended version of "Nimrod" from Edward Elgar's "Enigma Variations." Elgar is an English composer who wrote the famous "Pomp and Circumstance" theme used at graduation ceremonies. Nimrod is intended to express musically a tremendous triumph against an unspeakable tragedy, and it suits this film, because Dunkirk was a disaster and yet its strategic retreat would change the course of World War II. Elgar's work was also chosen by the New York Philharmonic shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In his acceptance speech for "Best Achievement in Sound Mixing" at the BAFTA Awards for his collective work on this film, Gregg Landaker stated that this was his two hundred and seventh and final film, as he officially retired in 2018 (Royal Albert Hall London/18 February 2018).
Harry Styles had personal security on set due to unwanted attention.
The strength of the British army was just under three million in 1940, and only three hundred and thirty thousand people were rescued from Dunkirk. About twenty percent of these three hundred and thirty thousand were French troops. Britain needed to train and arm new soldiers during Dunkirk, but had no soldiers at all. Even if Germany had captured the troops at Dunkirk, they were not ready to invade Britain. The Royal Navy still controlled the Channel, and the Kriegsmarine had lost too many ships in Norway. Since the German High Command began preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union in early July 1940, it is debatable whether Hitler truly intended to invade the United Kingdom. If the Axis Powers had succeeded in invading the United Kingdom, the Royal Navy would have continued the war from Canada.
Among the cast are four Oscar winners: Sir Mark Rylance, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Sir Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy; and two Oscar nominees: Tom Hardy and Barry Keoghan.
One of the most difficult shoots for cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema was due to the constant use of IMAX cameras weighing between forty-six pounds (twenty-one kilograms) and two hundred and fifty pounds (one hundred and thirteen kilograms).
When the British Expeditionary Force was felt to be lost, the British government had decided to continue the war. On 26 May 1940, the War Cabinet discussed an offer by the still-neutral Benito Mussolini to mediate a negotiated end to the war. Two days later, Sir Winston Churchill convinced all members of the cabinet to continue the struggle at any cost. Nevertheless, the overall importance of sending back at least two hundred thousand British fighters cannot be overlooked, because this constituted at least seventy-five percent of the entire British Expeditionary Force in Northern France.
Sir Christopher Nolan's uncle appears as a blind man. As of 2025, this is John's last feature film role.
Mr. Dawson's character resembles Charles Lightoller, who survived the sinking of the Titanic as first officer, served in World War I, and also used his own boat to personally rescue soldiers from Dunkirk. Like Mr. Dawson, his son died while flying in the RAF during the war.
The left wings of all the Supermarine Spitfires seen on screen were painted almost entirely black as part of the friend-or-foe identification scheme applied early in the war, but this had mostly been abandoned during the Battle of Britain.
Tom Hardy and Sir Mark Rylance were nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 2016 Oscars, for The Revenant (2015) and Bridge of Spies (2015) respectively. Rylance won the award.
The "ME-109" is actually a Buchon Hispano HA-1112-M1L built for the Spanish Air Force after the war. It has the same Rolls-Royce Merlin engine as the Spitfire.
Christopher Nolan claimed that Ron Howard, who had just finished In the Heart of the Sea, gave him advice on shooting ships on water. Nolan found the most useful advice to be shooting night scenes in a tank while shooting daytime scenes on the open sea.
The style of this film resembles the silent-era war dramas such as The Big Parade (1925), as it is told largely in visual terms and uses only very little dialogue.
The first Sir Christopher Nolan film not to receive financing from Legendary Pictures since The Prestige (2006).
Before starting work on this film, Sir Christopher Nolan consulted Steven Spielberg, particularly regarding Saving Private Ryan (1998). Spielberg recalled: "Knowing and respecting that Chris is one of the most creative filmmakers in the world, my advice to him was, as I did on 'Ryan,' to put imagination second in his research to truly honor this historical drama."
Tom Glynn-Carney (Peter) commented on how exciting the shoot was, saying, "It will make every job I do after this boring."
Unusual for a World War II story, this film is about civilians rescuing military personnel; the reverse is also true.
When the evacuation began, the Royal Air Force had been bombing German cities for sixteen days. The first raid was on Dortmund on 10 May 1940, and Mönchengladbach was bombed the following night.
The fuel used by the Germans was supplied by the Soviet Union under the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement signed in February 1940.
One of the newspaper headlines shown in the final scene reads "Spirited raid on oil tanks at Ghent". Fighting between Belgian and German forces was still ongoing along the defensive lines of the Scheldt and Lys rivers between the cities of Ghent and Kortrijk. King Leopold managed to postpone the surrender of the Belgian Armed Forces until 28 May.
Writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan reunited with composer Hans Zimmer, editor Lee Smith, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, production designer Nathan Crowley, casting directors John Papsidera, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy. Apart from Hoyte van Hoytema, who has worked with him since Interstellar (2014), most of the team has worked with Nolan since The Dark Knight trilogy.
The only film among the Best Picture nominees not nominated in any acting category.
Sir Christopher Nolan intended to have a real "full-size" destroyer at all times, both as a background set and as a set for some scenes. The film crew was reported to have travelled the world to find suitable ships. Their first choice was HMS "Cavalier" (R73), a Royal Navy C-class destroyer commissioned in 1944, retired in 1977 and now a museum ship at the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, Kent, in the United Kingdom, and Britain's last surviving World War II-era destroyer. In the end, "Cavalier" was not used, both because of the associated costs and the reluctance of the relevant authorities to move it out of the safety of Chatham. According to both behind-the-scenes footage and James Mottram's book "The Making of Dunkirk", harbour officials in Dunkirk suggested the French destroyer "Maillé-Brézé" (D627), commissioned in 1957, retired in 1988 and moored as a museum ship in Nantes, for the film's use. On their recommendation, "Maillé-Brézé" was later hired, inspected and towed to Dunkirk, and took on the role of HMS "Vivacious" (D36) and HMS Vanquisher (D54) in the final film.
It is the fifth film by writer, producer and director Sir Christopher Nolan to feature a character delivering a monologue during a montage of multiple events, and it closes the film.
Only two women have speaking roles.
"Xylonite" was the name of one of the rescue sailboats seen in the trailer. It is open to visitors and is located in Maldon, Essex.
In his final will in April 1945, Adolf Hitler denied wanting war with the British Empire and claimed he had allowed the BEF to be evacuated from France. However, his order in May 1940 was the destruction of the BEF.
It is the fifth film by Sir Christopher Nolan to make the AFI's Top 10 Films list.
One of the civilians serving on one of the small boats was Mr Lightoller, an officer who survived the Titanic disaster.
With eight Oscar nominations, this film stands equal with The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010) as the most Oscar-nominated film in Christopher Nolan's filmography.
It is Sir Christopher Nolan's first war film.
After Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), it is the third blockbuster in which Tom Hardy wears a mask or covers his face for a long time.
This is the seventh Sir Christopher Nolan film to be distributed by Warner Bros.
This is the third film released in 2016-2017 focusing on the evacuation of Dunkirk. They Finest (2016), directed by Lone Scherfig, tells of a film crew making a film about the evacuation of Dunkirk, while Joe Wright's Darkest Hour (2017) recounts Winston Churchill's first 40 days as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The evacuation of Dunkirk took place less than a month after Churchill came to power.
Early in the film, the trio of Spitfires flies over the yacht in the centre of one of the three levels. Its owner, Mr Dawson, says, "The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. The best sound you can hear out there." Spitfires were powered by the Merlin. The German Bf 109s of that period would have had Daimler-Benz engines. However, the Messerschmitts used in this film are not 1940-period aircraft but Hispano Bf 109s built in Spain under contract for the Spanish Air Force in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Instead of the sleek nose profile of the original Bf 109s, these aircraft have a "chin" to accommodate their new engines, which were Rolls-Royce Merlins. An inside joke? Therefore, no matter which fighters were flying, the real actors, not the characters they portrayed, would have heard the sound of Rolls-Royce Merlin engines.
This film contains the most footage ever shot on 65 mm IMAX film stock to date; one hour and nineteen minutes of the final cut consists of footage shot on IMAX film stock. This surpasses the previous Christopher Nolan film, The Dark Knight Rises (2012), whose final cut consists of one hour and twelve minutes of footage shot on IMAX film stock. Nolan would later far exceed this record with The Odyssey (2026), shot entirely in 70 mm IMAX and using approximately 2.1 million feet of film.
The Guardian UK and Warner Bros. UK reported that the film earned £1.33 million of its gross in IMAX venues in the United Kingdom, and also performed well in venues offering 35 mm and 70 mm projection. Picturehouse, for example, achieved higher seat occupancy for its celluloid presentations. Internationally, on two hundred and thirty-two IMAX screens, the film grossed nearly seven million pounds, with a strong average of nearly thirty thousand pounds per screen, making it the third-highest-grossing IMAX opening weekend of all time in July, both internationally and globally. The film opened in forty-six international markets, appearing in IMAX in forty-two of them, and played on a total of ten thousand seven hundred and seventy-five screens, with a handful of 70 mm engagements.
The third World War film starring Cillian Murphy and based on true events. The previous ones were The Edge of Love (2008), in which he played Captain William Killick, who saw action in Greece, and Anthropoid (2016), in which he played Josef Gabcík, tasked with assassinating SS General Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.
With five hundred and twenty-seven million dollars worldwide, it was the highest-grossing Best Picture nominee of 2017, ahead of Get Out (2017), which grossed two hundred and fifty-five million dollars.
This is the first Sir Christopher Nolan film based on true events.
In the United Kingdom, the film opened at the very top of reasonable expectations, taking a very strong £10.02 million from six hundred and thirty-eight cinemas. That is higher than the opening frames of summer blockbusters such as War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Despicable Me 3 (2017) and Wonder Woman (2017). This film, Beauty and the Beast (2017), Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (2017) and Despicable Me 3 (2017). (The Fate of the Furious (2017) was also seemingly bigger, but its initial figure was boosted by significant previews.)
The featured small boat was designed after the Sundowner, captained by Charles Lightoller, who had been Second Officer on the Titanic, with a crew made up of his son Roger and Sea Scout Gerald Ashcroft. The Sundowner brought back more than a hundred men. Unlike in the film, the entire crew survived Dunkirk.
It is Sir Christopher Nolan's first period film since The Prestige (2006).
This was Tom Hardy's third World War project, after Colditz (2005) and Band of Brothers (2001).
Tom Hardy is the only Spitfire pilot wearing flip-up tinted goggles. These are the same goggles worn by Bruce Spence, who played the Gyro Captain in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) and Jedediah the Pilot in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985). Hardy played "Mad" Max Rockatansky in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).
Sir Christopher Nolan cited The Battle of Algiers (1966) as a major influence on this film, describing it as "a timeless and affecting true narrative that forces you to empathize with its characters in the least theatrical way imaginable. We care about the people in the film because we feel immersed in their reality and the odds they face."
Sir Christopher Nolan stated that Chariots of Fire (1981) was a major influence on this film, saying: "Visual grandeur, interwoven narratives and aggressively anachronistic music… came together to create an understated masterpiece of Britain, whose popularity quickly concealed its radical nature."
This is the first Sir Christopher Nolan film since Insomnia (2002), and generally the third film, aside from his first film Follow (1998), in which no American character is played by a non-American actor.
Sir Christopher Nolan stated that Ryan's Daughter (1970) was one of the significant influences on this film, saying: "Thrilling windswept beaches and crashing waves… In these works, the relationship between geographical spectacle and narrative and thematic drive is extraordinary and inspiring. Pure cinema."
Christopher Nolan once again relied on practical effects and large-scale real-world displays rather than extensive CGI for many of the action sequences.
Christopher Nolan and his cousin Miranda Nolan, who plays a nurse, share the same paternal grandfather, who served as an RAF pilot and died during the war. He partly inspired Farrier.
It is Christopher Nolan's first film to use only a 2.20:1 aspect ratio instead of the 2.39:1 aspect ratio for digital projection, due to the transition to DCP.
When shown on British TV, a version that is entirely in 16:9 throughout the film is shown, instead of the original cinema version that switches between 3 different ratios.
Michael Caine has an uncredited role as the radio voice of the Spitfire flight leader. In the process, he effectively reprised his role as Squadron Leader Canfield in the 1969 film Battle of Britain.