The Dutch cinematographer took Nolan's oldest obsession to its final form, shooting The Odyssey entirely on IMAX film.

Hoyte van Hoytema shot every frame of The Odyssey on IMAX film. Nobody had done that before. Christopher Nolan called it a dream he had been nursing since he was sixteen, telling PetaPixel that the thing stopping him had always been the sound. Van Hoytema is the cinematographer who made it operational.

The Format

The Odyssey uses the IMAX Keighley, a newly built 15/70 film camera, along with a custom anamorphic lens system van Hoytema helped develop from Panavision Primo 65 elements. The camera runs about 2.5 minutes per magazine before it needs reloading. A soundproof housing weighing over 300 pounds allowed the crew to shoot intimate dialogue with actors whispering a foot from the lens. Nolan credits the enclosure directly. "You can be shooting a foot from an actor's face while they're whispering and get usable sound," he told PetaPixel. Over two million feet of 65mm Kodak stock passed through the cameras, at roughly $1.50 per foot. "IMAX is a camera that doesn't lie," van Hoytema said. "This is definitely the format that this story wants to be seen in and that has always been our first choice." The scale has real audience consequences. Only 41 venues worldwide can present the film in its native 1.43:1 IMAX 70mm format, according to Variety.

The Collaborators

Van Hoytema, 54, was born in Horgen, Switzerland to Dutch parents and trained at the Łódź Film School in Poland. His breakthrough came with Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In in 2008, a film whose Swedish snowlight became a reference point for a generation of cinematographers. He followed it with David O. Russell's The Fighter, Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Spike Jonze's Her. Then came the Nolan run: Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet, Oppenheimer, and now The Odyssey. Five features across twelve years. In between, he has continued to work with other directors who share his commitment to celluloid: Sam Mendes on Spectre, James Gray on Ad Astra, Jordan Peele on Nope. He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Oppenheimer in 2024, along with the BAFTA and the ASC award.

What's Next

Van Hoytema has not announced his next project. Given the scale of what he just delivered, and the fact that most Nolan collaborations stretch across roughly two years, the pause reads as earned. What comes after IMAX is a question worth asking. Van Hoytema has already made the format do things it was not designed to do. The Odyssey is in theaters through the fall. See it in the biggest room you can find.