The first feature ever shot entirely on IMAX film cameras opens tomorrow. The cinematographer behind it has spent a decade building toward this moment.

The Approach

Hoyte van Hoytema was born in Switzerland in 1971 to Dutch parents who returned to the Netherlands shortly after his birth. He trained at the Łódź Film School in Poland, joining a tradition of European cinematographers shaped by that institution's rigorous attention to craft. His breakthrough came in the dark: Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson's 2008 Swedish vampire film, announced a cinematographer fluent in cold light and restraint. The film's muted blues and snow-buffered silences became a quiet benchmark for horror photography, achieved entirely on film. Van Hoytema has never crossed over to digital.

The Nolan Years

In 2014, Christopher Nolan hired van Hoytema for Interstellar, beginning a partnership that now spans five films across twelve years. The collaboration is grounded in shared commitments: both men prefer film over digital, and both have steadily pushed the practical limits of IMAX photography. For Dunkirk (2017), van Hoytema earned his first Academy Award nomination. For Oppenheimer (2023), he won, finding ways to render the invisible visible on 70mm stock. The Trinity test sequence was achieved by inverting real color footage into monochrome, a practical solution that produced some of the most discussed images in recent cinema history.

The Odyssey, opening July 17, marks the culmination of that decade-long technical progression. It became the first feature film ever shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, according to production reporting. Working with Panavision, van Hoytema co-developed custom large-format anamorphic lenses based on elements from the Primo 65 series, modified to work with the IMAX image circle. More than two million feet of 70mm film, roughly 610 kilometers of stock, were used during production.

The Signature

What connects the work across nearly two decades is an insistence on practical solutions over digital intervention. For The Odyssey, sound blimps concealed the cameras during close dialogue; mirrors were rigged to help actors maintain eye contact when the cameras blocked their sightlines. Van Hoytema fitted portable LEDs matched to firelight color temperature during a night sequence at Troy, freeing the camera to face any direction. The European Film Academy named him Cinematographers Chapter Principal in recognition of a career they described as defining "some of the most visually commanding films of the 21st century." Whether that assessment holds for The Odyssey may be the week's most closely watched critical question.