If you’ve watched a Christopher Nolan film released in the last decade, you’ve seen Hoyte van Hoytema’s work, even if you don’t know his name. He’s shot every Nolan feature since 2014 Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet, Oppenheimer, and now The Odyssey and along the way became one of the defining large-format cinematographers of his generation.
Van Hoytema, who is Dutch, built his reputation well before Interstellar. Let the Right One In put him on the map internationally, and The Fighter and Her the latter shot largely on an Arri Alexa specifically for its low-light performance, a deliberate departure from the film stock he’s generally associated with showed a cinematographer willing to let the story dictate the format rather than the other way around. That’s a theme that’s followed him through his entire career: he’s publicly resistant to the idea that film and digital are in some kind of hierarchy. He shoots film because of how he sees the world, not out of nostalgia.
Interstellar (2014) put him and IMAX 70mm together for the first time on a Nolan production. Dunkirk (2017) earned him his first Oscar nomination. Tenet (2020) pushed large-format action to a new extreme, and it’s also where he started operating IMAX film cameras handheld rather than defaulting to cranes and dollies a habit that would matter a great deal later. Then came Oppenheimer (2023), which won seven Oscars including, finally, Best Cinematography for van Hoytema himself at the 2024 ceremony. It was his second nomination and first win, making him the first Dutch cinematographer ever to win an Academy Award, and only the eleventh Dutch person in any category to do so. In his acceptance speech, he thanked Nolan and producer Emma Thomas directly, calling them “by far the best thing that could have happened to my career.”
The Oppenheimer story that best explains how van Hoytema actually works is the black-and-white film stock. Large parts of the film needed to be shot in black and white, in large-format IMAX, and no such stock existed Kodak had never manufactured a 65mm black-and-white large-format film in its history. Rather than switch formats or fake it digitally, van Hoytema went directly to Kodak and asked if they could make one. They agreed, and started shipping prototype Double-X 5222 65mm stock to the production in sealed cans with handwritten labels, essentially hand-delivering an experimental product mid-shoot. Getting the film to actually run required re-engineering the IMAX cameras themselves the pressure plates and gates had to be adjusted for the specific thickness of this stock’s emulsion backing to avoid scratching the negative, a genuinely custom piece of camera engineering built around a genuinely custom piece of film. It’s the clearest example of a pattern that defines his whole career: when the tool he needs doesn’t exist, he gets it built rather than compromising the image.
Van Hoytema is also the cinematographer behind The Odyssey, Nolan’s 2026 adaptation shot entirely on IMAX 15-perf/65mm film the format he’s spent a decade helping push back into the mainstream of big-budget filmmaking, operating a roughly 300-pound handheld rig himself for most of the production. It’s a fitting continuation: the cinematographer who’s spent his career arguing that film still has something digital can’t replicate, and who’s willing to get Kodak to manufacture stock that’s never existed or physically carry a IMAX camera on his shoulder to get it, shooting the first movie ever made entirely on the format.
NL Times. “Dutch cameraman Hoyte van Hoyteman wins Oscar for cinematography on Oppenheimer.” https://nltimes.nl/2024/03/11/dutch-cameraman-hoyte-van-hoyteman-wins-oscar-cinematography-oppenheimer. Mar. 2024.
British Cinematographer. “Hoyte van Hoytema ASC NSC FSF wins Best Cinematography Oscar for Oppenheimer.” https://britishcinematographer.co.uk/hoyte-van-hoytema-asc-nsc-fsf-wins-oscar-for-oppenheimer-cinematography/. 2024.
Wikipedia. “Hoyte van Hoytema.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyte_van_Hoytema.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “Hoyte van Hoytema on Breaking the Boundaries of Reality.” https://newsletter.oscars.org/news/post/hoyte-van-hoytema-oppenheimer-interview.
IndieWire. “Kodak Had to Engineer Brand-New 65mm Film Stock for the Black-and-White ‘Oppenheimer’ Sequences.” https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/oppenheimer-cinematography-imax-hoyte-van-hoytema-1234886893/. 2023.
PetaPixel. “Kodak Specially Manufactured Black and White 70mm Film for Oppenheimer.” https://petapixel.com/2023/07/24/kodak-specially-manufactured-black-and-white-70mm-film-for-oppenheimer/. July 2023.